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Biblieal ieetures 



REV. I. D. DRIVER, 



Young; Men's Christian Assoc 

PORTLAND, ORK 



11 



Delivered and poblis^d by r}<?qu<?st. 



Price, Fifty Cents. 



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COHTEHTS. 

Lecture One. — The Existence of God and Natural Neces- 
sity of a Revelation from Him. 

Lecture Two. — Is the Bible a Revelation from God? 

Lecture Three. — Interpretation of the Bible. 

Lecture Four. — The Eternal Sonship and Incarnation of 
Christ. 

Lecture Five — Miracles. 



Biblical ieetures 



/ 



REV. I. D. DRIVER, D.D., 



BEFORE THE 

Yonng Men's Christian Association 

PORTLAND OREGON. 



Delivered avjd published by Request. 






V y *J , 



PORTLAND, OREGON, 

PRESSES OF HIMES THE PRINTER, 

169- 171 Second St. 

1888. 






Copyright, 1888, 
By I. D. Driver. 



Lecture One. 



The Existence of God and Natural Necessity of a 
Revelation from Him. 




|LL theories of cosmogony admit the eternal existence 
Hfj of something. If we imagine all worlds and every 
form of life blotted out of existence, thus annihilating 
space, still vacuity would exist; but we can not imagine the an- 
nihilation of vacuity— and with nothing in existence but vacuity, 
divested of all forms of life and matter, we can not imagine the 
rise of the present order of things. "Out of nothing, nothing 
comes,'' is the self-imposed faith of all reasoning beings. 

All theories accounting for the existence of matter in its pres- 
ent condition and forms begin with something. The "Nebular" 
theory begins with "fire mist," at which time all the matter now 
composing the present solar system was so light and attenuated 
as to fill all the present space to its utmost boundary. By cooling 
and contracting a ring was formed and detached from the parent 
body which marks the present orbit of Neptune, now about one 
billion and a half miles from the sun. By aggregation and con- 
solidation, the " ring" was formed into a world and is now mov- 
ing in the same orbit the ring moved at the time of detachment. 
Meanwhile the residual mass kept cooling and contracting until 



a vast space existed between the present mass and its first off- 
spring, when, by the same process, another ring was formed and 
in due time another child was born into the family of worlds. 
These children, following the example of their great parent, by 
the same process and under the same laws, gave birth to a satel- 
lite, a grandchild of the great parent mass. Still the great pa- 
rent mass kept cooling, contracting and throwing off worlds, and 
these worlds, by the same process, throwing off satellites until 
the world we inhabit was thrown off from the sun and our moon 
from our world, when the solar system was completed. 

This, to say the least, is a beautiful theory, but fails to account 
for the fundamental idea, and as Tyndall says — " Leave the great 
mysteries of nature unexplored. " Where did motion come from ? 
What inaugurated rotary motion ? How account for some plan- 
ets moving in an opposite direction from others? If motion was 
communicated from the parent mass, all must move in the same 
direction. Can we conceive of a body communicating a motion 
diametrically the opposite of its own ? 

For all theories we must have a " beginning," and can we 
have a " beginning " without a beginner? Let us see. 

Where did " fire mist " come from? What caused it to begin 
"cooling and contracting?" We dare not say the " cooling and 
contracting " were eternal, for if so, it must have been " heating 
and expanding" eternally, and this would not only carry it be- 
yond the limits of the solar system, but through the universe it- 
self, annihilating every system but its own and destroying the 
very idea of different systems. Does not the transmutation of 
species involve the same idea? 

But leaving these speculative thoughts, let us return to the 
eternal existence of something, by whatever name it may be 



called, whether " Cell," "Protoplasm," " Fire Mist," "Force," 
or, as Herbert Spencer says — " The unknown and unknowable." 
Let us ask ourselves (by whatever name we may call it) — Did it 
possess intelligence? With absolute certainty it did or did not. 
Which shall we say? If we say it did, we make it a supreme 
intelligence — for as there could be nothing superior or anterior to 
it, we certainly make it supreme. Then if we add intelligence, 
it unquestionably becomes a supreme intelligence. If we say it 
did not possess intelligence, we must either deny our own intelli- 
gence, or admit that it has communicated what it does not pos- 
sess, which " evolution " itself can not do ; for " evolution " can 
never evolve that which the source did not possess. The theory 
that grinds out of a mill something that never was in the mill, 
annihilates the mill and destroys itself. 

But let us try our minds from another stand-point and ask our- 
selves three questions. Where did matter come from? With ab- 
solute certainty it was created or it is eternal. If we say it was 
created, we admit a personal creator and there is an end of the 
controversy. But if, with ancient Greeks and modern material- 
ists, we say it was eternal, then let us ask the second question — 
Where did motion come from ? Like matter it was created or it 
is eternal. If motion was created, there is a personal creator. 
But if we say motion is eternal, let us ask ourselves the third 
question — Where did thought come from? It, like the two 
former, was created or it is eternal — Which shall we say? It 
matters not, for either gives the same answer. For, if thought 
was created, there is a personal creator, or if thought is eternal, 
there is an eternal, thinking being and either one is God. The 
only way to get rid of the idea of a supreme intelligence is to 
deny our own intelligence. The moment that we admit that we 



ourselves possess intelligence, we are compelled to admit that it 
was in the cause from which our own was derived. 

We have already seen if thought is eternal, then there must 
bean eternal, thinking being, and beyond this we are unable to 
think— for thought reaches its utmost limits in the self-evident 
propositions, that whatever else God could make he could not 
make himself, for this would make him act before he existed ; 
and whatever t l&e thought may think, it can never think itself out 
of existence. Neither can we find the beginning of life. Ask 
the Bible for its origin in man, and we are told— " he breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life." Ask nature and science and 
one word tells the history of life in the animal and vegetable 
world — " transmitted." 

As " life " is eternal so is " force," and the aggregate amount 
of force can never be increased or diminished. Let the Appe- 
nines, the Andes, and the Alps be wrapt in one general confla- 
gration and send their lurid volumes of fire and smoke to heaven, 
and the Rocky mountains of the once far west participate in the 
general burning, and the aggregate amount of heat will not be 
increased. "There is no power but of God, the powers that be 
are ordained of God." — Rom. xiir.-l. 

B. F. Underwood, of the Boston Investigator, in a pamphlet he 
published, asked — " Who made the Christians' God?" Now sup- 
pose I could answer him and tell. If he had the logical powers of 
a bright fifteen-year old boy, he would retort by saying — " If your 
God was ' made,' he was a creature," and as he who made him was 
superior and anterior to him your God w r as only a creature, and 
he who made him was God, and his question repeated would be 
overturned by the same answer ad infinitum. What a contrast 
between his logic and that of the Hebrew prophet—" Before me 



there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." — Tsa 
xliii.-lO. 

This supreme intelligence must be a trinity in unity. The ev- 
idence of this is found in the fact that man is a trinity in unity, 
and no theory can describe his powers, relate his history or un- 
fold his development without admitting it. 

As a matter of fact, he contains all the grades of life known 
in the universe, and comes into existence in the very order laid 
down by Moses — 

First— Vegetable life, called by Moses the "herb" or "tree 
whose seed was in itself." 

Second — Animal life, called by Moses the " moving creature." 

Third— Rational life— " In the image of God and after his 
likeness." 

Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, and all naturalists, speaking of his 
body, call it " man," and the terms they employ are incapable of 
misconstruction — a " high man," a " low man," a " heavy man," 
a "light man" — using these terms they have no more reference 
to his mental powers than they have to a steam engine. De- 
scribing his mental powers, they say he is an " educated man," an 
" illiterate man," a "wise man," a " foolish man." They have 
no more reference to his body than to the dwelling-house in 
which he lives. 

Speaking of his moral powers they call him a " good man," a 
" bad man," a " pure man," a "vicious man." They now have 
no reference to his mental or physical powers, as he may be the 
wisest man in the world and yet the worst man. 

Now, if I possess these three grades of life which constitute me 



a trinity in unity, I am unable to evade the conclusion that the 
source whence my existence was derived must also possess them, 
or that it has given me something which it itself does not pos- 
sess, and this, to me, is unthinkable. 

The same result is reached, and the same conclusions forced 
upon me, when I contemplate the duration of that unknown and 
unknowable, that never had a beginning and will never have an 
end. It is measured by the past, present and future. The " past " 
is of infinite duration; so is the " future " and the " present." A 
procession from the past is co-extensive with the past, hence we 
see the past is infinite. Time, or the " present," proceeding from 
it, is just as long as the past and the future is infinite ; or the past 
is eternal, the present has been eternally coming, and the future 
eternal duration. Here are three infinites in one infinite ; three 
eternals in one eternal — either one is as long as all three, and all 
three are no longer than either one. Like an eternal approxi- 
mation, yet never attaining a given point, the conclusion is 
forced upon our minds, though in neither case are we able to com- 
prehend it. 

This eternal existence revealed to Moses, "Eheyeh asher ehe- 
yeh," rendered in our English version " I am that I am ;" trans- 
lated by the Septuagint, "Egoemihoan," " I am he who exists ;" 
by the Vulgate, " Ego Sum Qui Sum," " I am who I am." The 
Arabic paraphrases them — " The eternal who passeth not away." 
— Clarke. These words recorded by Moses, so wonderfully expres - 
sive of a self-existent eternal being, were caught up by the Greek 
travelers and writers who had access to the writings of Moses, 
and may be found in the works of their leading philosophers. 
Clement, of Alexandria, president of that great school, quotes 
multitudes of Greek authors, whose works perished in that great- 



9 

est library the world has ever known, all admitting the antiquity 
of Moses, and confessing they got their knowledge of God from 
him. Numinius, as quoted by Clement, says, " For what is Plato 
but Moses speaking in Attic Greek." Justin Martyr, a converted 
philosopher, who wrote the first Christian apology to the Em- 
peror of Rome shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, quotes 
a vast number of Greek authors to show that all the knowledge 
the Greeks had of God they got from Moses. They were never 
contradicted, and their quotations from authors, still extant, show 
how correct and careful they were. Aristotle says the Greek 
word " aion " is compounded of " aei " always, and "on," being, 
"because God always is." De Caelo, lib. 1, chap. 9 ; and the lan- 
guage, thought and construction of his sentence shows that it was 
taken from Moses. 

Let me, as a specimen, quote a single passage from Justin Mar- 
tyr in his " Hortatory address to the Greeks," chap. 25. Speak- 
ing of Plato, he says: " For being charmed with the saying of 
Moses, ' I am the really existing, 7 and accepting with a great deal 
of thought the participial expression, he understood that God de- 
sired to signify to Moses his eternity, and therefore said, ' I am 
the really existing,' for the word existing expresses not one time 
only, but the three: the past, the present, and the future. For 
when Plato says, ' and which never is,' he uses the verb is of time 
indefinite. For the word ' never ' is not spoken as some suppose, 
of the past, but of future time. And this has been accurately un- 
derstood by profane writers. And, therefore, when Plato wished, 
as it were, to interpret to the uninitiated what had been mystically 
expressed by the participle concerning the eternity of God, he em- 
ployed the following language : ' God, indeed, as the old tradition 
runs, includes the beginning, and end, and middle of all things.' 



10 

In this sentence he plainly and obviously names the law of Moses 
the ' old tradition,' fearing, through dread of the hemlock cup, to 
mention the name of Moses, for he understood the teachings of 
the man were hateful to the Greeks. * * * And 

Diodorus says that Moses was the first of all lawgivers, the letters 
which belong to the Greeks, and which they employed in the 
writings of their histories, having not yet been discovered." This, 
and multitudes of similar passages, written in the first struggles 
of Christianity with paganism, show how deeply God's revelation 
to Moses entered into the controversy, and the deep and lasting 
effect that wonderful passage has had on the minds of thinking 
men from the time it was uttered to Moses to the present day. 
And, after it has been carefully studied for three thousand three 
hundred years, our own minds stagger in confusion as we 
struggle to grasp the mighty thoughts conveyed in the ut- 
terance " I am that I am" ; and the compass is no truer to the 
pole than all succeeding revelation is to this form of speech. 
When speaking of the existence of God, nine hundred years 
after this, the prophet says (Psa. xc-2), "from everlasting to 
everlasting thou art God." Not thou wast, for that would con- 
fine his existence to the past ; nor thou shalt be, for that would in- 
clude only the future ; but thou art, which, as Justin Martyr says, 
is of time indefinite, and includes the past, present and future. 
Then, six hundred and fifty years after this, when he was incar- 
nated and the Jews asked him, " Art thou not fifty years old and 
hast then seen Abraham? " the very word uttered from the bush 
one thousand five hundred years before is repeated, " Verily I 
say unto thee before Abraham was I am." John viii-5, 8. And 
Paul, describing his attributes (Col. 1-17), says : " He is before all 
things." And in Rev. 1-8, " Who is and who was and who is to 
come, the Almighty." 



11 

Can any one believe that, without supernatural aid, a succes- 
sion of writers for one thousand six hundred years expressed such 
a thought in language that describes an existence that includes 
past, present and future ; or, as another one expressed it, the 
"High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity?" Isa. lvii-15. 
As soon could I believe that a ship, without a pilot, made its way 
from the ocean one thousand five hundred miles up the Missis- 
sippi river. 

Paine, in his "Age of Reasou," says — " I believe in one God 
and no more.' 7 No Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan ever be- 
lieved anything else. Neither did Mr. Paine believe that because 
man is possessed of a mental, moral and physical nature he is 
therefore three men, but that it takes the three to make one man. 

Having briefly examined some of the evidences of the exist- 
ence and nature of God, the next thought that naturally suggests 
itself is this: a natural necessity for a revelation from him. An 
affirmative answer settles the question, for no natural necessity 
ever existed, nor can exist, where there is nothing to meet it. 
There is no necessity for prolonging the life of a beast, a bird or a 
fish, or extending their existence beyond the present, as every 
object of their being is answered and all progress impossible. 
Nothing useful could be effected by giving them a future state of 
existence, when all their aspirations, attributes and powers have 
reached their full development in this. The first beaver that 
built a dam made as good a one as a beaver can ever build. No 
bird will ever build a better nest than the first one made. Every 
creature, animal and vegetable, must have opportunity and time 
to develop its growth, or mature its powers, and every creature 
but man does that in this world. 

Man alone is out of proportions. Let him live in this world 



12 

until he has learned its geology, chemistry, and the material com- 
posing its solid contents, and he is still thirsting for knowledge. 
His labor and research have only increased his powers and pre- 
pared him for greater achievements. With instruments of his 
own devising he discovers worlds scattered through infinite space, 
while his aspirations and capabilities are as limitless as the space 
into which he looks, or eternal duration which he contemplates. 
But, without a revelation as a moral being, all his capabilities and 
powers are worthless, as he possesses no faculty by which he is 
able to determine what is right or wrong, as we shall see in our 
second lecture. 

Give to man a " rule of action " and no limit can be set to his 
progress; but a perfect "rule" he never can make. Give him a 
"seed " and he can develop and multiply it forever, but he never 
can make a "seed." Man's nature demands a law, and under a 
" perfect law " his deathless energies will expand forever. Deny 
him this law, and he is the most helpless creature that God has 
made. Every other creature is a law unto itself, and needs noth- 
ing higher. Without a line, square, rule, or plumb each can con- 
struct its own habitation. Without a compass, quadrant or chro- 
nometer, each can traverse the seas or migrate from clime to clime. 
The sight of sea-fowls quieted the mutinous spirit of Columbus' 
sailors. Says a historian — "some appeared to be weary and set- 
tled on the masts of his ships ; here they remained all night, but 
in the morning they departed and flew to the west, when the 
most lively joy filled the hearts of the seamen." The birds fol- 
lowed their own instincts ; Columbus followed his compass, and 
without it he never would have again seen his native county. 

Take from the navigator of to-day his nautical instruments 
and the stupid booby that settles on the mast of his ship to re- 



13 

fresh its weary frame can make its way to land and leave him to 
perish at the mercy of the winds and waves. The sea gull that 
follows his craft, to pick up the crumbs of bread that falls from 
his table, always keeps its reckoning in itself— but man can never 
depend on himself alone for guidance. A law or an instrument 
is his guide, and his faith in following them determines his course. 
How forcibly these ideas are impressed by all the teachings of Holy 
Scripture. For example — " Yea, the stork in the heavens know- 
eth her appointed times, the turtle, the crane and the swallow 
observe the time of their coming, but my people know not the 
judgment of their God." 

The bee, without compass, square or line, can so shape his cell 
that the mathematician demonstrates, loses the least space. — 
Brought overland, a distance of two thousand miles, over mount- 
ains and deserts, shut out from all communication with the 
world around, and when, at intervals, the emigrant stopped to 
rest his teams and wash his clothes, confident of the capabilities 
of the little creature, he opened their habitation and let them go. 
Yet, in this strange country to which they were brought in dark- 
ness, they were perfectly at home ; and among the hundreds of 
strange substances, eight or ten thousand of them made several 
selections in a day, yet, not in a single instance, is one deceived ; 
and in perfect confidence we eat the fruits of their labor, involv- 
ing millions of selections, with a definite understanding that if 
one made a mistake our life would pay the penalty. Yet we eat 
without exciting a fear. We can trust the instinct of the bee, 
but we can not trust the God who gave it the instinct ; or, per- 
haps, deny the relation between cause and effect by doubting his 
existence. But we have not yet stated the full measure of the 
little creature's capabilities. Thousands of miles from whence it 



u 

was born, and all the way brought in darkness, it leaves its home 
in search of wealth, which it never fails to distinguish from ev- 
ery poisonous thing, and when it has procured its precious burden, 
rises in a circle and when it takes its course, you take its bearing 
by your compass and follow it and you will strike its habitation ; 
and yet, our naturalists tell us a bee can see but a few feet. 

All animals are supplied by nature with means of escape and 
modes of protection. To one is given a tooth, to another, a sting, 
others are clothed with quills, fleetness, color, etc.; but no creature 
is put in a helpless condition — and just as exposure increastsand 
dangers increase, modes of protection are added and ways of es- 
cape are multiplied. 

Take, for instance, the deer. To all carniverous animals, able to 
destroy him, he is a special object of desire, while man, with his 
wonderful instruments of destruction, destroys him for food and 
sport ; yet, see how nature protects him. What fleetness and ca- 
pability for endurance. How_keen his sight. How sharp his 
hearing. How acute his smell. And, in addition to all these, 
nature comes around four times a year and paints him a new 
color, so that he is always kept the color of the objects among 
which he moves. 

Now, while all " natural necessities " are met in all the realm 
of nature (and without it no creature could subsist), is man, the 
highest necessity in the universe whose nature demands a "rule 
of action," overlooked? Is there nothing to meet the demands 
of his nature? The very assumption is unaccountably strange ; 
especially when we consider that the assumption is contradicted 
by every fact in nature. 

For many years I have believed that all rejection of the Bible, 



15 

as a revelation from God, was either the result of misinterpreta- 
tion or a diseased moral nature. 

I was led to this conclusion in the early part of my ministry 
by an incident which occurred, which is still talked of by those 
who were then and are still skeptical. A naturalist and a man of 
culture, who was traveling on this coast, was taken sick in the 
city where I was stationed and went to the hospital for treatment. 
After some time it became evident that he must die. One even- 
ing, after dark, the physician in charge of the hospital came to 
my house and said, "Mr. Driver, I want you to come and see 
that sick stranger; he is going to die. I am not a professor of re- 
ligion, but it makes me feel badly to hear him talk — he does not 
believe in the Bible or Christianity." 

I had heard of the man's ability and felt reluctant to go, but a 
sense of duty impelled me and I went with the doctor. Seldom 
have I met a finer-looking man, or felt a kinder grasp of the 
hand, than he gave me. Seating myself beside his bed, I said : 

" Sir, you seem quite ill." 

Without hesitancy or apparent concern, he said : 

" Yes ; I am going to die." 

I asked, ' ' Have you the consolations of religion to comfort you ? ' ' 

He replied : "I do not believe in the Bible, nor the religion 
it teaches. Nature is the altar at which I have worshipped ; she 
has been my guide; her teachings I obey." 

I began to offer him evidences. He stopped me by saying : 

"You are a well man; if I were well I could answer all your 
arguments." 

This, of course, disarmed me, and I saw if I could not move 
his moral nature I had better say no more. I said : 

" You speak of nature as a guide." 



16 

He said, " Yes ; she is infallible." 

Looking deep into his beautiful blue eyes, I said to him, "I, 
too, profess to have been educated in the same school ; is it not 
strange that, receiving our instruction from the same teacher, 
we should arrive at opposite conclusions ? Certainly one or the 
other of us has misinterpreted, or the teacher has deceived us." 

He said, " It is not in the teacher." 

I replied, " The mistake, then, is in me or you. Now, is it worth 
while to compare opinions? If I have misinterpreted, I know it 
has been honestly done, and I have a sincere desire to correct it." 

He said, " That is right ; I feel so, too." 

He looked very earnestly at me, and I asked, "In all your re- 
searches have you ever found a creature Whose nature was op- 
posed to its appetite? " 

After some hesitation, he said, "No ; such a creature can not 
exist. With a carnivorous stomach and an herbivorous appetite, 
it could only live until it starved to death, and propagation would 
be impossible." 

" Are there any exceptions to this law ?" 

He said, " No ; none in the animal or vegetable world." 

I said, " You think you are going to die ? " 

"Yes." 

"And that death will terminate your existence?" 

"Yes." 

" Now, answer me — have you not an appetite for something 
you have not got? " 

" Yes ; I want to live." 

"How long do you want to live? " 

Looking confused, he said, " I can't tell you." 



17 

I said, " You must look to the utmost Jimits of desire and tell 
me where it is." 

With animation he said, " I can't." 

"May I assist you ? " 

"Yes." 

" Suppose you could now be assured that you shall live until a 
creature should come from a remote part of the universe and carry 
a grain of sand and deposit it, and in a thousand years return 
and continue to do so at these intervals until the last grain of sand 
and drop of water composing the solid contents of the globe should 
be removed, and then this wall now before you should be met in 
ceasing to act, think and be forever, would that meet the de- 
mands of your appetite?" 

He said, "No." 

" Do you know of anything that would ? " 

In great bewilderment he said, " No." 

"And yet you say that everything in nature teaches there 
must be. Now, I am not going to say that my Bible is true or its 
religion is true, but would this meet the demands of your appe- 
tite ? " — and I quoted Christ's words, John vi-51 : " I am the liv- 
ing bread which came down from heaven ; if a man eat of this 
bread he shall live forever " — and his eyes flashed like fire, and he 
said, " Yes, it would — I have misinterpreted nature " ; and he 
asked me to read the Bible and pray with him. I stayed with 
him till late at night and wonderful was the change. I never 
saw him again alive. 

This was nearly twenty-nine years ago, and hundreds of times 
have I thought of the stranger, and, as I write, I distinctly re- 
member his face and anxious look. And but a few years ago I 
was riding with a skeptical gentleman of high intelligence, who 



18 

lived in the city at the time of the occurrence ; he spoke of the 
incident about which the doctor had told him, and said it had 
always been a subject of great perplexity. 

How strange, when we look at man, the only race of intelli- 
gences inhabiting our globe, and the only creature whose nature 
opposes its appetite ; I say, how strange, when we see him so be- 
wildered as to crush out of his own nature and do all he can to 
destroy in others a desire for the very thing for which he would 
give the material wealth of the universe if that wealth were all 
his own! Can a natural necessity exist that is unprovided for ? 
We have seen it can not. "Ask now the beasts and they shall 
teach thee; and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee ; and 
the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. — Job xii. 7-8. Man, 
the highest of all natural necessities, can not be an exception — 
and in our next lecture we shall see that in the Bible that neces- 
sity is met. 



Lecture Two. 



Is the Bible a Revelation from God ? 



fflifN all the disputes and controversies of the human race, 
lid there is no subject upon which the mind of man has ex- 
pended go much anxiety, labor and research, as this. 
Yet, astonishing as it may seem, from the beginning of the con- 
troversy till the present time, the difference between authenticat- 
ing and interpreting has been ignored. This mode of controversy 
can settle nothing. Facts, alone, can authenticate anything. 
Leave the settlement to interpretation, and you have as many 
interpretations as you have interpreters. If a document is au- 
thenticated, it must be done by establishing facts, and not by an 
interpretation of its teachings, as no interpreter can show his in- 
terpretation correct. But if it is authentic, its authenticity can 
be, and if done at all must be, established by questions of fact, 
and when this is done, no interpretation can set it aside. All the 
philosophies of men must fall when they come in]conflict with a 
single fact. The fall of an apple and the discovery of gravitation, 
destroyed the philosophy that man had been building for six 
thousand years. 

If the Bible is ever authenticated, it must be done in the same 
way that any other document is authenticated. In this respect 



20 

it is subject to the same rules of criticism ; for, although God 
claims to be its author, yet the evidence he gives to man of its 
authenticity must be of the same nature required to establish the 
authorship of any human production, to bring it within the 
knowledge and capacity of man. If a divine revelation has ever 
been made to man, the difference) between giving and perpetuat- 
ing that revelation must be as great .as that of giving and per- 
petuating human testimony. The testimony given carries its 
weight at the time, but to perpetuate and carry its force to future 
generations, it must be put in an imperishable form. Nothing 
but the acts of Moses and Christ could establish their divine mis- 
sion, and show to the generations in which they lived that they 
were divinely commissioned. But the acts they performed must 
stop with them ; for, if continued to our day, would have de- 
stroyed the very evidence of divine interposition, for it is evident 
the divine nature of these acts would be destroyed by being in- 
terwoven with the common and daily occurrences of nature, and 
it would be no more evidence of divine action to see the dead 
raised or seas divided than it is to see the sun rise and set. 

On careful reflection, it will appear evident that in no other 
way could a revelation be given than by supernatural acts attest- 
ing a divine mission, and then by monumental testimony as 
" seals" put these evidences in an imperishable form to transmit 
to future generations. The acts Moses and Christ performed were 
the highest evidences that God could give that he had sent them. 
The national monuments as "seals " to perpetuate them, are as 
good evidence to us as the acts were to them who saw them. Tes- 
timony, accompanied by proper "seals" and attestations, can 
lose none of its value by time. 

Nearly eighteen hundred years ago, Celsus wrote a treatise 



21 

against Christianity, and by a review, interpreting the precepts 
of the Bible, tried to overthrow its divine authenticity ; and from 
that day to the present every writer against Christianity has fol- 
lowed him and not one of them has ever alluded to the evidence 
that authenticates an instrument. All undertake to disprove its 
divine origin by interpreting it, and every man is his own inter- 
preter, and no two of them interpret it alike. 

It is the work of a lawyer to prove the authenticity of the 
Bible, and the work of a theologian to interpret it. But nothing 
can be farther from nature and common sense than for any man 
to offer as an argument his own interpretation of the precepts of 
any book or system of laws against its alleged authorship. 

Suppose that I should attempt to do with the Constitution of 
the United States what the opposers of Christianity for eighteen 
hundred years have been trying to do with the Bible. They 
offer their own interpretations as proof that God is not the au- 
thor of the Bible. I offer my interpretation to prove that the 
fathers never made the " Constitution." They offer as evidence 
that God never made the Bible, the different interpretations the- 
ologians have put upon it. I offer the different interpretations 
statesmen and jurists have put upon the " Constitution " to prove 
the fathers never made it. 

Our Constitution was made in our own language by the wisest 
and best of men and in the most progressive age ; and yet, over 
the interpretation of that simple instrument, made almost within 
the memory of man, a million of men have been put into prema- 
ture graves, billions of dollars of national debts contracted, and 
hundreds of thousands of widows, orphans and cripples left 
among us — all over a simple question of interpretation, and yet 
no one denies that the fathers made the Constitution, and no one 



22 

thinks that these deeds of horror and human suffering are attrib- 
utable to that grandest of all human instruments. 

It is not the fault of our " Constitution " that our citizens con- 
strue it so differently, nor the fault of the Bible that Christians 
do the same ; but it is the fault of any man that will stand for- 
ever against his intelligence or honesty to say that because Amer- 
icans interpret the " Constitution" and Christians interpret, the 
Bible so differently, therefore God never made the one nor the 
lathers the other. But with the admitted difficulty, or, perhaps, 
impossibility for human wisdom to interpret the Bible, or na- 
ture, or even the " Constitution," so as to be free from objections, 
is that to be considered an objection against either the authorship 
or wisdom of either one? The very reverse is true ; for a reve- 
lation to meet future wants must contain the element of progress. 
Bat all progress is based on ignorance, for ignorance is as neces- 
sary to progress as wisdom. Where there is no ignorance, there 
can be no progress. But while wisdom insures progress, loyalty, 
alone, can make a citizen. Nothing but loyalty can lay the foun- 
dation for citizenship and secure protection in any government, 
human or divine. And on no other foundation, and on no other 
principle can government be instituted, not even in thought. 
" Love (or loyalty) is the fulfilling of the law ;" and a world of in- 
telligence ignoring these principles by sanctioning disloyalty, and 
making wisdom the test of citizenship, would be an institution 
to educate devils, and only another name for hell. 

Hence, in our own government, where there are so many 
thousands of educated lawyers, and perhaps not two-score con- 
sidered capable of interpreting our constitution, the good man, 
scarcely able to write his name, can live out his three score and 
ten years without the slightest danger of violating and incurring 



23 

the penalty of the law that takes so much wisdom to interpret. 
And in nature, with all her profound mysteries, the untold mil- 
lions of human bodies, the most complicated and mysterious of 
all machinery, could be kept in running order (if we can believe 
science) till 1616 before a man on earth knew that he had blood 
that circulated in his veins. In nature and revelation, the per- 
petuity and protection of life depends solely on facts. The study 
and comprehension of these facts is the only road to mental 
progress. 

It must be clear to every reflecting mind that a revelation to 
meet the wants of man must, like nature, put the principles that 
perpetuate and sustain life within the reach of all ; while the 
principles that insure progression must, while man lives on the 
earth, be the source of agitation and controversy. 

When these self-evident principles are applied to the past con- 
troversies over the authenticity of the Bible, it will be seen that 
the controversy has not been over the moral precepts. Over these 
there has been no dispute. The objection has always been about 
something different minds would naturally differ as they had 
different strength of perception, as clearly indicated by the ob- 
jections raised. No two agree; or, if the discussion turns on a 
precept given for the civil government of a people, the fact ig- 
nored or entirely overlooked that although God is the author of 
a civil code (to give it in wisdom) it must be adapted to the wants 
of a people. Put it so high as to be above their surroundings and 
conditions, and it could never be either a system of instruction 
nor the means of progress. Or, if the dispute is about David's sin or 
Solomon's polygamy, the fact is overlooked that the acts are related 
in the history and condemned by the laws of the Bible ; and worse 
than all, the objector always measures the moral turpitude by the 



24 

moral law of the Bible. If the destruction of the Canaanites is 
urged, the most important part of the history is suppressed, and 
the material facts concealed. That God waited four hundred and 
thirty years, during which time he sent them the best men in 
the world to reform them, telling Abraham he would not there 
give him a foot of land, alleging as a reason — " the cup of the in- 
iquity of the Ammonites is not yet full," and when they had crossed 
the line over which a nation or an individual can not return, but 
forfeits its existence, then justice and the good of humanity re- 
moves them. These observations might be extended till every 
objection urged against the authenticity of the Bible for the last 
eighteen hundred years would be answered ; and then, by a col- 
lection and classification of the objections and pairing off, and 
showing what one man says is right another says is wrong, thus 
making one objection kill another, and show, at the same time, 
the supreme folly of trying to overturn the alleged authenticity 
of any document by an interpretation of its maxims or teachings. 

The authentication of a will, deed of conveyance, or any other 
instrument, depends on collateral or outside testimony, and can 
never be established by the teachings, precepts, or the provisions 
of the instrument itself. And this is pre-eminently true of the 
Bible, and to deny it would destroy the necessity of a revelation ; 
for if man is capable of determining what should and what should 
not be revealed, he is not in circumstances to need a revelation— 
he is a law unto himself, which has already been disproved. 

No instrument is of any use without collateral testimony to 
prove it authentic; and the Bible is not worth interpreting un- 
til it is shown to be the word of God. We now come to the di- 
rect evidence. 

The evidence that proves the validity of an instrument must 



25 

be separate from or outside of the instrument itself. To prove the 
validity of a document by its contents is like trying to identify a 
man by his own testimony. For instance : The Declaration of 
Independence, unsupported by evidence outside the instrument 
itself, is no evidence that on the 4th day of July, 1776, the fathers 
of this republic adopted that instrument. The statement is his- 
torical, but its truth can not be proved by the instrument ; neither 
can it now be proved that on that day the Declaration was drafted. 
This being an immaterial fact, no means were taken to perpetuate 
that fact. But it can be proved that on the aforesaid day and year 
that instrument was adopted by the fathers of this republic ; and 
the proof is furnished in a national existence then claimed, after- 
word established, and still perpetuated ; and by the monumental 
testimony of a national feast to preserve and perpetuate the oc- 
currence. And if this nation should stand ten thousand years its 
very existence would prove the great fact by the best evidence 
known to man— the origin and perpetuity of national existence. 
And as long as the citizens come together and on that day read 
that instrument and eat that feast, it is as good evidence that on 
the 4th day of July, 1776, the event it perpetuates took place, as it 
would be to raise from the dead these revolutionary fathers and 
have them testify to the date and contents of the Declaration of 
Independence ; for it is their living testimony put in an imper- 
ishable form. 

Now, apply these principles to the writings of Moses and the 
bearing they have on the question of his being a messenger sent 
from God, and the perpetuity of his divine mission. 

His writings are the constitution and statutes of a nation ; that 
nation is still in existence, preserved (as then stated they should 
be) in violation of every known law of nature. Scattered among 



26 

all nations, and for the first one thousand three hundred years of 
the Christian era, not allowed in any country the rights of citi- 
zenship or the possession of property (as then predicted, as we shall 
see), until the predicted treatment broke up their former pastoral 
habits for two thousand years. Yet, these foretold fiery persecu- 
tions they survived ; like the bush in which God appeared to 
Moses, always burning, but never consumed. And now, after two 
thousand years of dispersion, make a circuit of the globe, and in 
England, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, 
China, America, in the cities and nations of the earth, the six mil- 
lions three hundred thousand, on the day established by Moses 
three thousand five hundred years ago, you can see them eat that 
passover in commemoration of the flight of their fathers from 
Egypt. This national monument is as good evidence of the inci- 
dents they perpetuate as the Declaration of Independence and 
4th of July celebration are of our rebellion against a foreign yoke 
and the establishment of a government of our own, and in both 
cases preclude the possibility of fraud or deception, by entering 
into the facts received and perpetuated ; for no nation can ever be 
induced to erect a monument to perpetuate an event that never 
occurred. The very admission that such a thing is possible would 
destroy all testimony, overturn all courts of justice and render 
every fact both incapable of proof and perpetuity. 

The weight of testimony is still increased when we consider 
that this monumental testimony was set up at the time the event 
occurred for the very purpose of perpetuating the evidence of the 
fact. " This day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall 
keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, ye shall 
keep a feast by an ordinance forever."— Exodus xii-14. The acts 
testified to and perpetuated by this national testimony could leave 



27 

no doubt on a rational mind that God commissioned Moses ; and 
to deny that he ever performed them would be to overthrow all 
human testimony and render any thing incapable of proof. It is 
not philosophical to say that the actions attributed to Moses are 
unworthy of credit, when it can be clearly seen that the actions 
were necessary to show the interposition of God, and without 
them a revelation could not be made. In no other way could 
the divine mission of Moses be attested, nor the existence and 
power of God be established. The nature, character, and what is in- 
volved in a miracle, will be considered in our lecture on miracles. 

The question now is : Could human testimony establish the 
fact that Moses performed the acts recorded? The unquestioned 
fact is, they did so testify, and have put their testimony in an im- 
perishable form ; and we must either say that the acts of Moses 
demonstrated the existence and power of God, or forever invali- 
date the testimony of man. For, if it can be shown that a whole 
nation gave testimony to an event that never occurred ; founded 
national existence on and set up monuments to perpetuate it, no 
credit can be given to human testimony. But, it has been argued, 
that these miracles were performed before an ignorant people, and 
in an unscientific age. To this it may be said that the class of 
miracles were of such a nature that a scientific education would 
disqualify rather than aid in determining. The " bias " of pre- 
conceived theories would be present, while scientific knowledge 
could not be of the least assistance. Would Prof. Tyndall have 
any advantage over an ignorant man in determining that it was 
light in one dwelling and dark in another; or that in every Egypt- 
ian house the first-born was slain, while not one of the Hebrews 
perished? That a pillar of cloud gave light to one party and dark- 
ness to another? That one party passed the Red Sea on dry land, 



28 

while of the pursuers none escaped ? In none of these things 
could scientific knowledge be of the least help in determining, 
while the "bias" of preconceived theories would be a material 
objection. And we now can see that more than human wisdom 
was employed in selecting from nature that class of miracles 
where science could have no advantage in determining the facts. 

When we carefully consider the nature of the evidence — that 
it is the statutes and constitution of a nation whose national ex- 
istence is preserved in opposition to the laws that govern every 
other nation ; scattered for two thousand years into all the king- 
doms of the world, yet when we bring a Jew from the East, West, 
North, or South, when they have not seen each other's ancestry 
for two thousand years, yet they are nearer alike in their religious 
sentiments and general characteristics than our own children, 
raised in the same family and educated in the same school house. 
One of ours will be a Presbyterian, another a Baptist ; one a dem- 
ocrat, another a republican ; but a Jew is a Jew all over the earth, 
and in opposition to every known law of nature, lived and ful- 
filled the predictions of his own prophets for three thousand five 
hundred years — " I will sift the house of Israel among all nations 
like as corn is sifted in a sieve yet shall not the least grain fall 
upon the earth" — Amos ix-9 ; " And the wealth of the heathen 
round about shall be gathered together, gold, silver and apparel 
in great abundance;" their future history in all these improba- 
ble, and even miraculous, things is predicted with as much ease 
and accuracy as our well-informed historians write of the past. 
So that Paine and others have said of some of these prophecies, 
that they were " Christian forgeries of the third and fourth cen- 
tury," not knowing that they were translated from the Hebrew 
into classic Greek three hundred years before Christ was born ; 



29 

the laws of Moses can be traced through ancient Greek writers, 
and are admitted by them to be the oldest in the world. 

No man can read the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, written 
more than three thousand years ago, where the Jewish apostacy is 
predicted, their dispersion among all nations foretold, greatly dis- 
similar language of their captors mentioned, the ensign (eagle) of 
the Romans spoken of, the terrible siege of Jerusalem delineated, 
starving women eating their own children ; and then turn to 
Josephus, their own historian, corroborated by Roman history — 
I say no candid man can read these prophecies written by Moses 
and carefully compare them with the acknowledged facts of his- 
tory, but must feel that they could ouly be indicted by him " who 
knoweth the end from the beginning." And, further, when we 
reflect that the Jew is still so incomprehensibly preserved and 
scattered among all nations (as predicted), so that wherever the 
gospel is preached among the gentiles there is the Jew, God's 
" seal " to attest the divinity of the system, who can disbelieve? 
It is so unlike every other claim to divine origin, with every evi- 
dence that can attest truth, while no other claiming divine origin 
has a single one. When Mohammed took his journey from Mecca 
to heaven, why did he not set up (like Moses and Christ) a na- 
tional feast to prove and perpetuate it? Only for the reason that 
he could not get a nation's testimony, and could have nothing but 
his own statement to perpetuate. When Joseph Smith discovered 
the Mormon Bible, why did he not set up a national feast to com- 
memorate the event? Only for the reason that he could not pro- 
cure the testimony of the American people, and, having no affi- 
davit, he could only leave us his word. But Moses could and did 
procure the testimony of a nation, with statutes, constitution and 
all the evidence of a national existence and national testimony, 
put in imperishable forms. 



30 

When Mr. Layard disentombed the great Assyrian monument 
at Nineveh ; when the Arabs removed the rubbish from solid 
marble slabs, set up since Abraham lived and Moses wrote, some 
were so decayed by time that they could not be removed. Hence 
the testimony which perpetuates this revelation was not put on 
tables of stone, but the ever-enduring " tables of men's hearts," as 
nothing else is enduring. For mountains, by the wasting hand 
of time, crumble down to dust and oceans recede from their an- 
cient limits. But the monument that attests the divine origin of 
the Bible stands like an incorruptible monument of gold, defying 
the ravages of time ; has said for three thousand five hundred years 
and will forever say, "I am God's witness, "and any attempt at 
overthrow by human testimony, would destroy all human testi- 
mony and render anything incapable of proof. When the divine 
origin of the Bible is established, then the work of interpreting 
begins ; and every fact recorded is capable of a rational solution 
and in strict accordance with nature, as we shall see when we 
come to the question of interpretation. But, before we consider 
the New Testament, let us look at some of the evidences that cor- 
roborate the revelation to Moses. 

It is acknowledged by all authority that the law of Moses is the 
basis of all our civil laws, and are yet far in advance of our high- 
est civilization. Blackstone says, "some of our institutions are 
still pagan ; " and a history of our laws would only be a history 
of the struggles of Christianity with paganism. The history of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment of our constitution is the 
history of all our laws. Not a maxim of the civil law but is 
founded on the Bible, and the very chapter and verse can be 
pointed out. Moses found slavery and polygamy in existence 
and had no power to eradicate them, but by the moral growth of 



31 

public sentiment, and no legislator has any other power. If 
Abraham Lincoln had issued the emancipation proclamation one 
year before he did, he would have sunk this nation. And if God 
is the author of a civil code, to found it in wisdom he must adapt 
it to the moral and intellectual conditions of a people. Go beyond 
this and they will not execute ; use compulsion and force, and you 
destroy their freedom and leave them in a worse condtion. The 
nation Moses organized, like all others, had to have two codes, 
and of necessity one was opposed to the other, as one is for the 
protection of the other. Our civil laws say, "whosoever shall 
take life of any reasonable being in form shall be deemed guilty 
of murder and suffer death;" but military law prepares instru- 
ments of destruction and hires men to use them to destroy human 
life by the million, the very thing forbidden by civil law. I ad- 
mit the civil law of Moses did tolerate slavery and divorce, for it 
had no power to eradicate slavery or polygamy. Look at their 
condition in his day — when a single man had five hundred wives 
and as many servants, and their children. Set them all free and 
turn them out without protection or support, and famine, with 
pestilence, consequent upon famine, would produce a thousand 
evils where one before existed. In China, or even Salt Lake, to- 
day governmental provision would have to be made. In that age 
it could not be done. The moral law of Moses, acting with his 
civil code, operated like our church and State, and no man (whose 
intellect was enlightened), as an adherent to his moral law, could 
own a slave until he wished to be made a slave himself, and that 
no man ever did. 

Now, where did Moses get these " ten precepts?" and where 
did he get his alphabet in which they were written ? Neither 
was any part of " Egyptian wisdom" where he received his edu- 



32 

cation. Egypt had no letters in Moses' day. Look at their na- 
ture. Take all the scientists and legislators that now live ; set 
them down to write a code of laws for the government of man- 
kind, and with all past progress and experience, they can not 
make laws adapted to human want for fifty years to come. At 
untold expense they must be "repealed," modified and changed 
almost yearly to meet human progress and wants. And yet these 
ten precepts that a child can recite in a Sunday school in five 
minutes has governed every conceivable cage that has come 
within the range of human imagination for three thousand three 
hundred years, yet not a word has been added or taken from 
them. Not only this, but they contain every sound of the He- 
brew language and every letter of the Hebrew alphabet but two 
consonants since added. All moral duty, and the language in 
which they were written are, beyond controversy, the life of the 
civilized world. Reverse, to-day, these ten precepts, enact their 
opposites and enforce that law, and in ten days nothing would be 
left of the nation but corpses and coagulated blood. 

Where did he get the government he established? Egypt, 
where he was educated, was opposed to it in every essential form, 
and our own Constitution, the first ever made by Bible-reading 
men, was taken from it. Noah Webster, in the preface to his 
dictionary, says— "The United States commenced their existence 
under circumstances wholly novel and unexampled in the his- 
tory of nations. They commenced with civilization, with learn- 
ing, science, and with the best gift of God to man, the Christian 
religion." 

The Jewish Government had thirteen tribes or states. (Joseph 
had two parts.) From these, seventy persons were chosen which 
constituted the Supreme Tribunal, and the right of appeal was 



33 

recognized from the lowest judge up to this. No king was al- 
lowed, and for four hundred and fifty years they were ruled by 
judges; and when they rebelled and made a king, were told it 
would be their national destruction. Their constitution and our 
own were the only two ever submitted to a people for ratification ; 
their constitution and our own were the only two that made pro- 
vision for the naturalization of foreigners ; and their constitution 
and our own were the only two that ever prohibited a foreigner 
from holding the chief executive office. For their ruler it was 
commanded — " Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee which is 
not thy brother." — Deut. xvii-15. 

In all these essential features, we as readily see every principle 
of the Jewish government transferred to our own as we see the 
artist's skill in transferring every lineament of our mother's fea- 
tures to the polished glass. Where did Moses get these civil and 
moral codes, the basis of all our moral and social progress to our 
day and far beyond us? 1 ask— Where did he get them? To say 
that he was a wise man and stop there, only increases the diffi- 
culty ; for it makes him wiser than all men from his day to the 
present, and that would make him a God. So that in trying to 
evade one difficulty we fall into another still greater. 

When the Old Testament is authenticated, it is a short and 
easy task to prove the inspiration of the New Testament. Or, if 
the divine mission of Christ be established, that of his Apostles, 
chosen by him, follows as a necessary consequence, with all whose 
divine mission they acknowledge. For, when their inspiration 
is established, their sanction establishes the authority of all the 
prophets they quote and settles the canon by the writings they 
acknowledge ; and this self-evident rule acknowledges the books 
as we^ have them and rejects the Apocryphal books — neither 



34 

Christ nor his Apostles ever quoting a sentence from them. Be- 
sides, the sacred books were written in Hebrew, and the others in 
Greek, and never acknowledged until canonized by the Romish 
church, in the fifteenth century. The simple question then is, 
can a history of Christ — his life, miracles, death and resurrection — 
as related by the Apostles in the New Testament— be established ? 
This settles the whole question, and is the basis upon which 
Christianity has stood from Christ until to-day, and upon which 
it must forever stand or fall. 

The positive evidence is short and easy to be understood ; the 
corroborating testimony has been accumulating for one thousand 
eight hundred years. 

The New Testament contains the testimony of twelve men. 
Eleven of these were Christ's intimate companions, for three years 
his bosom friends. They record his miracles: of giving sight to 
those who were born blind ; of raising from the dead the widow's 
son, and Lazarus, who had been dead four days. They tell of his 
own predicted death and resurrection. They see him expire upon 
the cross. They see the soldier's spear pierce his side ; the flow of 
blood and water, showing the rupture of the pericardium, the sure 
evidence of his death. Of his burial in the tomb. The stone, the 
seal, the guard of one hundred soldiers, of the supernatural dark- 
ness at the time of full moon, and no eclipses could take place. 
Of his resurrection, the fear and fainting of the guards, his ap- 
pearance to them during the period of forty days, of the miraculous 
outpouring of the spirit on the day of Pentecost, conferring those 
miraculous gifts. All of these, if not true, could have easily been 
disproved ; and had they not been true the gospel could not have 
made a convert in Jerusalem. And when we consider that three 
thousand in one day left Judaism and were baptized in the name 



35 

of "Jesus Christ," on the testimony of their own senses, of the 
"star" at his birth, his miracles, resurrection, and gift of tongues 
to the Galileans (a people Ernest Renan calls the most ignorant 
of all civilization), enabling them to speak sixteen languages ; — 
these public facts, incapable of misconstruction or deception, ful- 
filled the prophecies, overthrew Jewish prejudices and established 
Christianity upon the " rock " on which it stands to day, and will 
stand to the end of time. Add to this the fact that every Apostle 
(one, perhaps, excepted) died in attestation of the miracles of 
Christ and his resurrection— and, be it remembered, they were 
not martyrs to opinions, but martyrs to facts. No martyr since 
their day has ever been, or ever can be, placed in their circum- 
stances. An opinion is all the evidence a martyr has given from 
Poly carp to the present time, and that is only an evidence of his 
sincerity and honesty; but it is the highest evidence that man is 
capable of giving — his dying testimony. But not one of these 
Apostles died, for his opinion (for in opinion a man may be mis- 
taken), but for the facts, when it it was impossible for them to be 
mistaken. In being with Christ for three years they could not 
be mistaken, nor in seeing his death and burial. Neither was it 
possible for them to be mistaken in conversing with and handling 
him for forty days after his resurrection. His allusions to his 
former teaching and future gifts make deception impossible. The 
only alternative is to say the facts of his life, miracles, death and 
resurrection, were absolutely true, or that every man died for 
what he knew to be absolutely false, and that, too, when telling 
what he knew to be true would have saved his life, a thing we 
may confidently affirm no man ever did or ever can do. The issue 
is right here, precisely where Paul put it : they were not and 
could not be mistaken. " If Christ be not risen we are found false 
witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that he raised 



36 

up Christ from the dead whom he raised not up if so be that the 
dead rise not." — I Cor. xv-15. One of two things is absolutely true : 
Christ arose from the dead, or ten of his apostles preached it and 
died attesting it when they knew it was absolutely false. 

Add to this the former position, prejudices and prospects 
of the Apostle Paul, his own account of his conversion, the in- 
centives that would move him to fabricate such a story, and enter 
upon such a life of suffering and self-denial, with no prospect but 
a life of suffering ending in martyrdom, and all for what he knew 
to be absolutely false! Mistake with him was impossible. The 
" glory of that light," that voice in his mother tongue, the three 
days' blindness, his "vision of Ananias coming to heal him," the 
scales falling from his eyes, his subsequent visions and revela- 
tions, make it as impossible for him to be mistaken in the facts 
he testified to, as it was to be mistaken in his own existence. 
And yet, after preaching them to old age, ending in a life of suf- 
fering, in sight of the scaffold from wmich his head was severed 
from his body, he wrote to his son Timothy — " I am now ready to 
be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought 
a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." 

No man could take it upon himself to leave what he left, and 
suffer what he suffered, and spend his life in telling what he 
knew to be false, and die uttering such words, when by telling 
the truth he could save his life — and he who can believe human 
nature capable of such a thing, must have lost his reason or all 
that is good in man. 



Lecture Three. 



Interpretation of the Bible. 




jN which are some things hard to be understood, which 
they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do, 
also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction."— 
II. Pet., iii-16. 

This is what the Apostle Peter says of the scriptures in gen- 
eral, and Paul's Epistles, in particular. Nothing said here would 
exclude the Bible from the laity, for the passage is positive proof 
that the scriptures were in their hands, or how could some 
" wrest " them. The danger spoken of arises, not from misinter- 
pretation, but a wilful perversion, indicated by the word "wrest " 
(strebloo), which means to twist as with a windlass, to screw up 
the strings of an instrument, to dislocate a limb ; and does not re- 
fer to a misunderstanding, but a wilful distortion, which is done 
to the "other" (plain) as well as difficult parts. 

It is not the interpretation of a moral precept which, alone, 
could do an injury. In this there is no danger. Over this there 
has been no controversy ; but refers to special relative questions 
which may be " understood " in the light of past history, reveal- 
ing customs, laws, languages, proverbs, and by a proper discrim- 



38 

iuation between what was " given by inspiration " and what was 
"inspired," as we shall see. 

The human mind is unable to evade the conclusion that if the 
Bible is a revelation from God, it must strictly comport with na- 
ture: and if it could be shown that nature contradicts the Bible 
in any material fact, the Bible, as a revelation from God, would 
be destroyed ; for, as certainly as a book contains the thoughts of 
the writer, just so certain does nature contain the thoughts of its 
maker ; and, as Blackstone says, when both are understood and 
compared, there is perfect harmony. But, as we have already 
seen, while the question of authentication is simple, direct and 
easy, the question of interpretation is (as Peter says) "hard," and 
almost, if not altogether, boundless. Neither is it strange that it 
should be so when we reflect that any rule for our guidance and 
safety must be simple and easy to comprehend, while that part 
intended for our meutal culture must contain difficulties reaching 
to the utmost limits of human progress, for all progress ends with 
difficulties. Where there is no difficulty, there is nothing to over- 
come. Where there is no struggle there can be no triumph. 

The Bible has difficulties, so has nature. So far they agree. 
Surrounded by, and working with, all the mysteries of nature, a 
man can live to old age and understand but little of what he has 
done and how he has done it ; and in five minutes he can read 
and comprehend from the Bible every moral duty his being re- 
quires. These essentials to perpetuate life are as plain in the 
Bible as they are in nature. Xo man of the human race has been 
in circumstances to become absolutely wise ; but every one of the 
human family, possessed of sufficient wisdom to be responsible, 
can be good ; and Jesus did not say— blessed are the wise in head — 
but the "pure in heart shall see God." To understand all the 



39 

mysteries of nature, does not necessarily make a better man. The 
"understanding of all mysteries" and "faith to move mount- 
ains," without "charity" (love or loyalty), profiteth nothing. 

As already stated (Lecture Two), from Celsus till to-day, no 
writer against the Bible has discriminated between authenticat- 
ing and interpreting an instrument. It is also remarkable that 
no distinction has been made between what is "given by inspi- 
ration " and what is " inspired." 

Hence, the "Drunkenness of Noah," "Sin of David," "Po- 
lygamy of Solomon," "Abraham denying his wife," all recorded 
in the histories given in the Bible, but all are condemned by 
Bible law. " All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works."— IT. Tim. iii., 16-17. Here the 
Apostle gives us the rules by which the scriptures are to be inter- 
preted, and it is very remarkable that they strictly coincide with 
the rules of evidence that govern our courts of justice to-day. 

All that a witness states is " given in testimony," and what 
he knows is testimony ; and telling what another man said is 
"given in testimony;" but the witness telling what another 
said does not make it testimony, as the man who told the wit- 
ness was not under oath; for, as Justice Buller says — "If the 
first speech were without an oath, another's oath that there 
w T as such a speech, makes it no more than a bare speaking". — 
Bull. N., p. 294. Now, apply this rule to inspiration. If the 
first speaker is uninspired, an inspired man telling what the 
uninspired man said or did, does not inspire the uninspired man. 
Surely, no one can think that an inspired man telling what Satan 
said, would inspire Satan. When Moses wrote the sentence — 



40 

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth " — that 
was "given by inspiration," and was inspired, for Moses was " in- 
spired " to write what God said. When he wrote the sentence — 
" Ye shall not surely die " — that was " given by inspiration " as 
much as the other, for Moses was inspired to tell what the ser- 
pent said, but Moses writing it by inspiration did not " inspire" 
the serpent. So when the Evangelist wrote — " Say we not well 
that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil," he wrote by inspira- 
tion what a wicked Jew said, but that did not inspire the Jew nor 
credit his testimony. 

I have been particular, and have repeated the same words, at 
the sacrifice of style, to make this distinction plain, as its disre- 
gard has confounded the distinction between the histories re- 
corded in the Bible and the laws of the Bible, and the strongest 
arguments against the scriptures have been the result of con- 
founding these distinctions. 

Only when inspiration tells what God says is " doctrine," is a 
rule that never can be disputed ; but to " perfect the man of God," 
inspiration must tell many other things. To give a " perfect " 
rule of life, humanity needs many things beside laws — example, 
experience, mistakes, departures — all are needed. To safely nav- 
igate the seas, the compass, quadrant and chronometer are not 
sufficient. By the aid of these the mariner knows which way to 
go and where he is ; but without the discoveries, mistakes and 
disasters of those who have gone before him, he is in constant 
danger. These mistakes and disasters are not put down on his 
chart for him to imitate and follow, but to show him where there 
is danger that he may avoid it ; and every such place marked on 
his chart has been the scene of greater or less disaster, and its lo- 
cation on the chart is the highest evidence of honesty and wis- 



41 

dom. Viewed from this stand-point, the sins and mistakes of the 
patriarchs, related by inspiration, show a faithful record and 
point out to us the danger, by showing the disastrous results and 
telling of the condemnation of God ; yet all writers against Chris- 
tianity have used these departures to disprove the inspiration of 
the Bible. As well might they use the past accidents and disas- 
ters on the seas, against the art of navigation ; and how unac- 
countably strange, when we reflect that they first ignore the Bible, 
then condemn Noah, David and Solomon by the Bible; — and all 
this is done by these advocates of universal mental liberty, which 
allows every man to do as he pleases. 

When we discriminate between what is only " given by in- 
spiration " and what is "inspired," and go through the Bible 
carefully and critically, we will be astonished to find how many 
difficulties have been removed and how many serious objections 
have been set aside. " To think," says the objector, " that Satan 
is permitted to send fire from heaven to kill Job's sheep, use the 
elements to destroy his sons and daughters while he is daily pray- 
ing for them, and do what is there recorded ! This is utterly repug- 
nant to all our ideas of God." Let us examine closely. Where did 
we get our " ideas of God?." From what God (through inspira- 
tion) says of himself. How have we got our ideas of Job's treat- 
ment? From what inspiration says Job's messengers said. We 
have the undoubted statement that Job's messengers did say so, 
and that is all we do have to warrant the belief. The value of 
their testimony is seen when Job was put upon his trial ; it was 
then said to Satan—' ' All that he hath is in thy power. ' ' Does not 
inspiration tell us that Satan's only " power " is to make men be- 
lieve a lie?" Has he ever exercised any other power over a hu- 
man being? Was not this the extent of his power in the case of 



42 

Job? The whole history ("profitable for instruction") shows 
this to be the fact. Four "messengers" (satans in whose 
"power" he now is) rush upon him in rapid succession with 
messages of accumulating disaster. Before one ends another be- 
gins. Every time, it is said, "while he was yet speaking there 
came another and said" — not waiting for the good man to re- 
cover a thought or breathe a prayer to God, and every "mes- 
senger" ends with the strange and startling announcement — 
"I only am escaped alone to tell thee!" Each twice repeat- 
ing that he "alone" and "only 11 made his escape. But again, 
when the last "messenger" told him of the destruction of his 
"sons and daughters," why was not another "messenger" 
sent to tell him of the destruction of his wife ? She was as much 
in Satan's "power" as his sheep, camels, sons and daughters. 
If Satan's "power" extended to the actual killingof his "sons 
and daughters," it extended to the killing of his wife. A "lie" 
here from the " father of lies " could not be made available, but 
would reveal the whole plot. 

Add to this what is seen in the winding up of this, one of the 
grandest of all the sacred books and the sublimest of all poems. 

" So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the be- 
ginning !" The schedule shows just two camels for one in the 
beginning, two oxen for one, two sheep, two asses — the natural in- 
crease of his property. He had also seven sons and three daugh- 
ters. The same number of sons and the same number of daugh- 
ters he had in the beginning. Now, if his seven sons and three 
daughters were actually killed, where and how did he come to 
have the same number of sons and daughters? 

Take another example still more dangerous— the " Witch of 
En-dor" raising Samuel from the dead— I Sam. xxviii. Now, 



43 

what evidence have we that Samuel rose from the dead ? Let us 
look at both sides — what was "given by inspiration" and what 
part was "inspired." Inspiration says, Saul sinned and God 
had forsaken him, aud when the Philistines invaded Israel, 
Saul inquired of God, and he refused to answer him by dreams, 
by Urim, or by prophets ; that Samuel had said God had deposed 
Saul and made David king in his stead ; that this was so no- 
torious that the women sang it in their dances—" Saul has slain 
his thousands, and David his ten thousands"; that this was 
known even among the Philistines ; that Saul " from his shoulders 
and upward was higher than any of the people " — I Sam. ix-2— a 
mark that distinguished him from every other man in the nation. 
On God's refusal to answer him he sought the Witch of En-dor. 
Now, is it not evident that no " disguise" could hide him from 
that woman, as he was at least a foot and a half taller than any 
man in the nation, with the positive statement — I Chron. x-13 
— that he lost his life for inquiring of this very woman ? "So 
Saul died for his transgression, which he committed against the 
Lord, even against the word of the Lord which he kept not, and 
also for asking council of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire 
of it." 

Thus far we have inspiration. Now, the evidence that Samuel 
arose is given. 

When this tall man came, she does nothing till she gets an 
oath from him to protect her; then she asks — "Whom shall I 
bring up unto thee?" And Saul said, "bring me up Samuel." 
Things had now come to where Saul could no longer be concealed, 
as he had to be known in the communication ; and she cried — 
44 why hast thou deceived me ? for thou art Saul " Reassuring her, 
he said — "What sawest thou ?" She said — " I saw gods ascending 



out of the earth." Only the woman's words (remember, gods). 
Saul asks for a description. Having lived within ten miles of 
where Samuel ministered all his life, she said — "An old man 
eometh up; and he is covered with a mantle." First, "gods," 
now but one. Then " Saul perceived that it was Samuel," by 
what the woman told him. That is all. She now tells him what 
the women sang and Philistines talked, that David was king. 
As to her prediction — "to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be 
with me" — where? — personating Samuel — yet with all the ambi- 
guity of ancient oracles. " To-morrow," was the only tangible ut- 
terance, and Saul did not die for fifteen or twenty days, and then 
killed himself to fulfill the prediction as "inspiration" states; 
and lost his life for inquiring of that very woman, and, no doubt, 
from a natural cause. 

What condition of mind would a general be in to command an 
army, were he so infatuated as to go into the cave of an enchantress 
and submit himself to her incantations? Inspiration says Saul 
lost his life for it, and I believe it. 

Can I believe that God refused to answer Saul by any legally 
constituted means, and then answered by means which he him- 
self had prohibited, under penalty of death ? This, no doubt, was 
a genuine case of necromancy (spiritism), the bane of all the 
ancient nations. Moses legislated against it — Deut. xvii-9:ll— 
" When thou come into thy land * * there shalt not be 
found among you * * a consulter with familliar spirits, 
nor a necromancer [consulter of the dead], for because of these 
abominations the Lord doth drive out the nations from before 
thee." 

For " correction " and "instruction," Saul at En-dor is profita- 



45 

ble ; for it shows what we see to-day, the baleful and destructive 
influence of necromancy or spiritism. 

Nothing but what God says dare be admitted as " doctrines," 
and by these alone is every utterance to be measured and believed, 
whether it be the dividing of seas, raising of the dead, or multi- 
plication of the loaves and fishes. If God says it, I believed it ; 
but if, in relating a history for (instruction) or (correction), it be- 
comes necessary for God to state what some other person says, 
and the saying of that "other person" comes in conflict with 
"doctrines," I am compelled by reason, and all that God has 
said, to believe the doctrines, and disbelieve what God says 
another person said. 

Every utterance of the Bible was "given by inspiration," but 
if we make every utterance inspired, we make the history of the 
Bible destroy its laws ; and what was only " given by inspira- 
tion " kills what was inspired. This puts a weapon into the 
enemy's hands with which he can destroy the Bible, for it gives 
him what God says to fight with, and leaves us only what God 
says another said to defend ourselves with ; and very often what 
" that other" did say is no higher authority than Job's "mes- 
sengers," the " witch of En-dor," or the " devil." 

The whole of Paine's " Age of Reason " is built on this found- 
ation. All Ingersoll's cavils are nothing but an array of the his- 
tories related in the Bible against its laws. 

With this mode of interpretation, making no distinction be- 
tween history and law, every civil government could be destroyed 
and every court of justice swept out of existence; and Paul, in 
his letter to Timothy, lays down the same principles when he 
says — "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman 



46 

hat needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
truth."— II. Tim. 11-15. 

These plain and obvious rules of interpretation, so much and 
so long neglected, remove very many of the greatest difficulties 
found in the Bible. 

These were the rules of interpretation originally observed, and 
not till the decline of. Christianity, were they departed from. The 
Apostolical Constitutions, which Whiston and some other learned 
men think were written by the Apostles, in giving directions to 
the laity for the reading of the Scriptures, says — " What defect 
dost thou find in the law of God that thou shouldest have re- 
course to heathen fables ? for, if thou hast a mind to read history, 
thou hast the book of the Kings ; if books of wisdom, thou hast 
those of the Prophets, of Job, and the Proverbs. If thou desir- 
est something to sing, thou hast the Psalms ; if the origin of 
things, thou hast Genesis ; if laws and statutes, thou hast the 
glorious laws of the Lord God. Propose to thyself to distinguish 
what rules were from the law of nature and what were added af- 
terward. Read also the books of the Kings that thou mayest 
learn which of the Kings were righteous." — Ect. Apos. Con., 
p. 20, Sec. vi. How clear and definite are these distinctions ! 

All writers against the Bible condemn the destruction of the 
Canaanites as unworthy of God. Their rule of rectitude is the 
character of God as revealed in the Bible. When reciting the 
history they suppress the material parts, misinterpret the other, 
and then compare the distortion with the character of God. As- 
suming their innocence and purity, all they say would be true ; 
but if the ruler of a nation has a right to remove a murderer who 
has forfeited his life, and, in that removal, details another man 
to execute the sentence — when the whole nation becomes thus 



47 

abandoned and criminal, the same justice that demands the re- 
moval of the individual by the state, also demands the removal of 
the nation by the ruler of the world ; and if it is right in one 
case for one individual to execute the sentence upon another, it 
is as just in the other case for one nation to execute the sentence 
upon another. In both cases, justice demands that in the execu- 
tion of both sentences, nothing vindictive or unnecessary be per- 
mitted. 

Now, were the Canaanites in this condition, and were these 
principles adhered to in their distinction ? The history appealed 
to says, yes. 

For four hundred and thirty years God waited for them to re- 
pent, during which time he sent the best men in the world to 
reform them. That Melchisedec was a better man than Abraham, 
is seen in the fact (as Paul quotes) that he met Abraham coming 
from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him ; and the Apostle 
adds, " without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better." 
Two hundred and fifteen of this four hundred and thirty years 
God permitted his own people to remain in the most abject bond- 
age ever known to man, alleging as a reason to Abraham, " For 
the cup of the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." — Gen. xv- 
16. Then they were removed by the penalty of a righteous and 
necessary law. The only question now to be considered is, was 
mercy extended to individuals as far as safety would allow it to 
go? The question, like many others, could not be answered when 
the command was given ; but, in the light of history and progress, 
it can now. Female virgins were all the exceptions that could be 
made, and preserve the commonwealth of Israel, prevent their 
retrogression back to the Amorites, preserve their national exist- 
ence, bring the Messiah into the world, and, by preserving the 



48 

Jews to this day, give indisputable evidence of the divine inspi- 
ration of the Holy Scriptures. Nothing but " virgins " could be 
incorporated without destroying the Jewish race. It is a well 
known fact that females, after the first offspring, carry to the end 
of life the nature of the male. A mare at three years producing a 
mule and ever after bred to a horse, every colt will resemble the 
mule ; and a widow, with one child, if she again marry and prop- 
agate, every child will resemble the first husband. A thorough 
Arabian mare, bred to a cold-blooded stallion, is forever ruined 
for the propagation of pure blood. The reason now is obvious — 
the father transmits the life, which is nourished by the mother, 
the father's life circulates through the umbilical cord through 
the mother, rendering the female as Adam said of the woman, 
" Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Hence, says Christ, 
11 They are now no longer two but one flesh.' 7 The same precau- 
tions and restrictions were used to preserve the tribe of Levi pure 
— the priest was not allowed to marry a "widow, a divorced 
woman, or profane, or a harlot." — Levit. xxi-14. "Marriage (says 
Dr. Draper, after showing that a child by a second marriage will 
resemble the first husband), produces, in this respect, a perma- 
nent change in the female, a constitutional impression, not disap- 
pearing in any length of time, the influence of the first husband 
reappearing in the children of a subsequent contract." — Phy., p. 
534. Hence, we now see the penalty slumbered four hundred and 
thirty years, and when it was executed mercy was extended as far 
as it could go. We will again have recourse to these principles in 
our lecture on the Eternal Sonship and Incarnation. 

In every department of nature all requirements for the 
guidance, safety and perpetuity of every creature is plain, and de- 
pends on facts put within the reach of every creature. To man 



49 

alone the philosophy of these facts is accessible. Acting upon 
these facts brings all their benefits; but nothing but their study 
and comprehension can give mental progress. Right here is the 
beginning of difficulties. In all the departments of Nature's 
school, but one instrument of development is employed —pressure. 
In all the vegetable kingdom, from the blade of grass to the giant 
red woods of our coast, some of which were standing when God 
called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, four thousand years 
ago, there is not an exception to this rule. Each, from the day it 
enters upon the career of life, has to battle with the tempest and 
conflicts of the elements; and if it can not bear the " pressure" it 
must die. How clearly the careful student and lover of nature 
sees this as he beholds the giant firs that adorn our mountain 
sides. Centuries back a pod contained two seeds. Bursting open 
on a calm and quiet day one fell into a low valley, surrounded by 
high mountains and a dense forest, protected from winds and 
storms. The next day, in a heavy gale, the other seed drops and 
is carried to a high summit, where, exposed and alone, it begins 
life. After three hundred years of development, look at the 
brothers. The one, protected by mountains and surrounding for- 
ests and relieved from " pressure," erects its tall and slender form 
and sends its top to mingle with the clouds. The other, exposed 
to fierce tempests and reared under continued pressure, stands a 
monument of strength and capable of enduring for centuries what 
his brother could not stand for an hour. This principle holds 
good in the development of the physical, mental, and moral 
powers of man. Take twin brothers, like the two "seeds"; sub- 
ject one to severe discipline — put him under "pressure" in body 
and mind, and when he is forty years old he will weigh the 
mountains in a scale and the hills in a balance, and stand with 
inquiring gaze on the threshold of infinity. Let his brother run 



50 

without physical or mental pressure, and compare the two in body 
and mind ; and does not all this hold good when applied to the 
moral nature of man? Can moral character be developed with- 
out pressure? Can there be a triumph without a struggle; a road 
with but one end ; an "up" without a "down," or a "right" with- 
out a ' ' wrong ? ' ' 

Nature never puts capital stock in the hands of an idler. 
Jesus, when speaking to the servant that "hid his talent," only 
expressed the natural law when he said, " For unto every one 
that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance : but 
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he 
hath." Heaven is nothing but the " survival of the fittest ; " for 
Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the 
eea, which gettest together the good and casts the bad away;" 
and a revelation without "difficulties" can never produce prog- 
ress, and could only be adapted to the inferior creature, incapable 
of progress, as shown in our first lecture. 

There is nothing revealed in the Bible but what can be made 
appear reasonable and shown to be a fact, on a comparison with 
nature ; yet, in both cases, the philosophy of the fact is an ever- 
increasing study. 

Difficulties are the parents of all progress. Things " hard to be 
understood " is the price paid for all wisdom. A religion without 
difficulties never came from the author of nature For the last 
three thousand years no pagan worship has contained anything 
" hard to be understood." The regions of the dead have made as 
much mental progress as the generations of their living. Twenty- 
five hundred years before Christ China made gunpowder, and yet 
has gone no further than to blaze it away in fire- crackers. Two 
thousand years before the Christian era she had the magnet, and 



51 

yet a Chinese junk never crossed the ocean unless she was towed 
by a Christian ship. Show us one step in mental or moral prog- 
ress outside the circulation of the Bible for two thousand years. 
Tt contains the germs of all natural and scientific progress, as we 
shall see in our next two lectures. 

Another important principle of interpreting the Bible is in a 
knowledge and careful study of the languages employed in re- 
vealing its great ideas — I am not now going to speak of the He- 
brew or Greek, however important — and ceasing to be spoken, 
suffer no change. In addition to these there is another language 
by which the original ideas are preserved — I mean the language 
of symbols, employed by Masons and Odd Fellows to convey a 
uniform system of teaching around the world. This mode of ren- 
dering thoughts visible was the first used by mankind, and can 
suffer no change by lapse of time. So long as nature remains per- 
manent, just so long will a symbol convey the same thought to 
every intelligent eye. A picture of a man on horseback would 
convey the same thought to men of every tongue. 

Herodotus, father of Greek history, tells us that when Darius 
invaded the Scythians, when in a perilous situation, a Scythian 
messenger was sent to him bearing a mouse, a frog, a bird, and 
five arrows. This Darius thought a favorable omen, as the mouse 
lives in the earth and the frog in the water, and sending earth 
and water in ancient customs was a surrender ; but Gobryas, his 
general, said, this is forced and not half the message ; for " unless 
you can fly in the air like birds, or swim in the water like frogs, 
or hide in the earth like mice, you can not escape these Scythian 
arrows." — Book iv, chap. 132. 

By this ancient mode a fuller was represented by two feet 
standing in water ; a charioteer by a hand holding a whip ; a judge 



D2 

by a man without hands or eyes ; justice by a woman holding 
a pair of scales evenly balanced ; a ruler by a star, etc. The 
Bible was the first book printed, and the first written in let- 
ters. In using these symbols the inspired penman used letters 
to express them, as I have done, calling each by its name, as 
"judge," "star," etc. This language, in the Bible, answers the 
same purpose that Latin and Greek answers in our laws and 
sciences ; and in the scriptures no two writers ever use a symbol 
to express two thoughts, any more than our English writers use 
a Latin word to express two ideas. 

This language is never used to teach moral lessons, but proph- 
ecy, where it becomes necessary for a time to conceal the mean- 
ing, or preserve a doctrine from corruption. To understand these 
and all other difficulties makes no better Christians, no more 
than to understand all our difficult constitutional questions makes 
a man a better citizen ; yet, in both cases, it is necessary to pre- 
serve the principles of government, as a false interpretation would 
destroy both. "The reason of the law is the life of the law." — 
Coke. 

Take a single instance : Paine, in his "Age of Reason," says 
Christ was not even an astronomer, for he says the "Stars shall 
fall from heaven," and argues the impossibility (I write from 
memory), as these stars are larger than our earth and could not 
fall upon it." Christ was here speaking of the destruction of Je- 
rusalem (Matt, xxiv), predicts the destruction of the temple, 
points out the course of the Roman army, mentions their ensign 
(all in symbolic language); then, speaking of the destruction of 
the Jewish polity and the dispersion of the Jewish rulers, says, 
the " Stars shall fall from heaven," etc. Here he used a symbol 



53 

that for two thousand years designated a ruler, and has done the 
same to our day. 

Remember Joseph's dream, for which he was sold into Egypt 
— " I dreamed that the sun, moon, and eleven stars made obeisance 
to me." His brethren understood it, and his father reproved him, 
saying, "shall I and thy mother and thy brethren bow down be- 
fore thee?" In this symbol his father held the place of the 
" sun," his mother the "moon," and his brethren, as heads or ru- 
lers, the "eleven stars." 

And, following this ancient symbol when we make a new 
state and bring into our national family a new ruler, we put 
another "star" on our flag. 

Nothing can be more unnatural and inconsistent than to ob- 
ject to the Bible as a revelation from God because it contains some 
things " hard to be understood," when the very fact is strong evi- 
dence of its divine origin ; for, had it been the work of man, it 
could contain nothing above man's comprehension, and could 
never live in the light of progress. Nothing but a divinely in- 
spired system could take the world as Christianity found it, over- 
turn the wisdom, philosophy, and religion of all past ages, live in 
all the progress the world has ever made, hold in its grasp the ed- 
ucational institutions, and live in the light of the nineteenth 
century. 

Rising in the morning you look out on this harbor ; a ship lies 
at anchor with a British flag floating at her masthead ; she 
dropped her anchor at night, while you were asleep. Three 
things you know, although you saw neither one. First— you 
know she crossed the Columbia bar. Second— you know she fol- 
lowed the meanderings of the Columbia to its junction with the 



Willamette ; that there she left the Columbia and run up the Wil- 
lamette to where she lies ; and, third — that there stood at her helm 
an intelligent being, who knew the meanderings of those rivers. 

Just as well do I know, when I see a book that has guided all 
the progress of the last two thousand years, without coming in 
conflict with a single principle of nature, that this book and na- 
ture have the same author. The very objections urged against 
the doctrine of the Bible have provoked controversy and caused 
progress. For instance: The Christian religion has been ob- 
jected to because it has produced so many sects; but, on a careful 
examination, this will be in its favor. Truly I can say, if the 
Bible required all Christians to unite in one physical or outward 
organization, I could not receive it as a revelation from God, for 
reason and the Bible both tell me that " The invisible things of 
him from the creation of the world are clearty seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made" — Rom. i-20; and all that God 
has made is opposed to the thought of bringing all men into one 
form of government, human or divine. On everything the crea- 
tor makes he place two marks — "unity " and " diversity ; " and in 
every department of nature, from the lowest to the highest forms 
of life. By "unity," the naturalist designates all the different 
species of creation. By " diversity," he tells the different individ- 
uals of each species. As a race we all have formation and charac- 
teristics that identify us with a race of creatures called men. Ob- 
literate this mark, and you can not tell a man from a horse. But 
this is not all the mark nature uses — she puts the second mark, 
called " variety," by which you tell one man from another. Ob- 
literate this mark, and all courts of justice are instantly destroyed ; 
for you can not tell the judge from the juror, nor the lawyer from 
the prisoner at the bar. 



55 

The same is true in a race of animals we call " horses." Shape 
and formation identify them with this race of animals and dis- 
tinguish them from every other animal. Obliterate this mark, 
and you can not tell a horse from an ox. But nature has put a sec- 
ond mark — " variety.' 11 Obliterate this, and the right of property 
would cease, for you can no longer tell your horse from my 
horse. This holds good in nature, from the lowest to the highest 
forms of life — the Creator's name on all he makes and reads — One 
Infinite God — "unity" and "diversity," as we found in our 
first lecture. Now, if God has formed a government on earth, 
have I not a right to demand these same evidences? " Loyalty " 
will eternally unify them, and diversity will improve them. Is 
not this, as a matter of fact, true of the church of God? In this 
respect, I am willing to submit it to the most rigid scrutiny, and 
compare it with every other institution on the face of the globe. 

From all the offshoots and diversities, from Abraham till to-day, 
taking in Jews, Mahommedans, Catholics, and every Protestant 
sect, there is greater "unity" of sentiment than exists among 
those who reject the Bible as a revelation from God. Among 
all I have named, there is a common belief in the existence of 
the same God. Not an attribute of his nature is denied— justice, 
mercy, love, omniscience, omnipotence, etc.; rewards and pun- 
ishments under his government, and the immortality of the hu- 
man soul. But there is no unity among infidels. Paine says — 
" I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for future life." 
Others say — " Bro. Paine, you are mistaken ; no such being ex- 
ists. God is a myth— a gross superstition." Another says— " Death 
' is an eternal sleep." They have not a single article of faith upon 
which to agree ; they only unite to tear down the hopes of im- 
mortality; and in this, the atheist gives the right hand of fei- 



56 

lowship to the spiritist, who is in constant communication with 
departed spirits, separated by a gulf as wide apart as life and 
death ; and yet their united efforts from Celsus till to-day, like 
the Apostles' " chain," has only contributed to the " furtherance 
of the gospel ;" and all their attacks have done is to cause a more 
critical study of the Word of God, showing its agreement with na- 
ture. If I were called on to give a theological definition of 
the nature and effects of Col. Ingersoll's labors and mission, the 
best I can think of is — "The Devil's whetstone to sharpen dull 
preachers on." But it might be asked if a man's labors and mis- 
sion contributes to the furtherance and building up of a good 
cause, is he not to be accounted as one of the laborers, and, with 
them, receive a reward? I think not; for Jefferson Davis con- 
tributed more to the destruction of slavery than all the politicians 
and statesmen from Washington to his day ; and yet, from the 
American people, he was entitled to no reward. 



Lecture Four. 



The Eternal Sonship and Incarnation of Christ. 




„HE invisible things of him from the creation of the 



world are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead ; 
so that they are without excuse." — Rom. i-20. 

The Apostle here says that God's invisible perfections may be 
clearly seen in his visible works ; that in the material universe is 
a revelation (unfolding) of his character — an incarnation of his 
thoughts, and that man, by a study of these works, possesses the 
capability to read these thoughts of God, learn his nature, and 
understand his character. Is not this true of every intelligent 
workman? Can a man make anything and hide his designs? 
It is impossible for any intelligent being to make anything with- 
out leaving upon it the impress of his thoughts. The nature and 
adjustments of every machine can be nothing more than the ex- 
pression of the thoughts of its maker, and his written directions, 
telling how to adjust its parts and regulate its movements, would 
only be a comment to help others understand it. 

This is precisely what the Apostle designed to teach when he 
wrote this text. That God is the originator of all things made ; 
and that in the material universe the character and thoughts of 



58 

God can be clearly seen. Now, let us see if the Eternal Sonship 
of Christ, His Incarnation, as taught in the Bible, are principles 
found in nature, and whether the scriptural account of that in- 
carnation would contravene or set aside what is called " natural 
law." 

At first thought, the very expression — " Eternal Son " — seems 
to be a contradiction ; but this is only in appearance and not in 
reality. Century after century rolled by; and to patriarchs, 
kings and philosophers, the sun revolved around the earth, and, 
to this day, appears so to do ; but a better acquaintance with the 
great truths of nature shows us clearly that these appearances are 
deceptive. This is true of all the operations of nature, and the 
superficial observer is always mistaken. 

There is every evidence that this world was made instrument- 
ally ; that in every act its maker used means ; and, if our inves- 
tigations stop with the means employed, materialism is the re- 
sult. The universal teachings of scripture are — that God made 
all things by his " word " (Logos). That this " word " or " son " 
(as we are father of all our words) was the instrument or " me- 
dium " through which God the father made "every thing in 
heaven and on earth visible and invisible." That this son is the 
"first born of every creature," and that " by him," (this creature) 
" all things were created in heaven and on earth." 

No patriarch that ever looked at the rising and setting of the 
sun would scorn with greater indignation the astronomical teach- 
ings of to-day, than our superficial thinkers now look upon the 
scriptural accounts of creation above, taken from Col. i. 16-19, and 
this universal teachings of scripture — " Who created all things 
by Jesus Christ" — Eph. iii. 9. 



59 

Take now the question of a "mediator" or medium — is it 
contradicted by a single fact in nature ? Every thing confirms it. 
Nothing in this world has ever come into existence only as it came 
14 through " a " medium." Eliminate this one w T ord " through," 
and all nature is paralyzed, and the whole scriptural account of 
creation destroyed. From infusorial life to the largest animal, 
and from the microscopic plant to the cedars of Lebanon, all be- 
gin " through " a " medium ;" and not only so, but the existence 
and perpetuity of each and all depend on the same mode — 
"through" a "medium," all are sustained; and all belief based 
upon any other theory or assumption can never furnish a single 
example in all nature to support it. 

Now, where did the first germs come from ? It is certain that 
there was a time when no life, vegetable or animal, was on this 
earth. As spontaneous generation is now exploded, life must 
have been created by intelligence. Indeed, no theory of creation 
can exclude intelligence ; for we are compelled to admit intelli- 
gence in the force, or intelligence behind the force, or deny the 
existence of our own intelligence; and if we use our intelligence 
to deny the existence of intelligence, we only commit suicide, and 
subject ourselves to Byron's retort on Berkeley — 

" When Berkeley said there was no matter, 
'Twas no matter what he said." 

Pursuing this mode of creation, "through" the instrument- 
ality of "mediator" or " medium," can we conceive of the " in- 
strument" being eternal? Can we think of an " eternal son?" 
Certainly, as soon as we think of an " eternal father ;" for unless 
there be an "eternal son," there can be no " eternal father ;" for 
the " father" could not be a father before he had a "son." The 



60 

one can not exist before the other. We must have both, or 
neither. 

No other doctrine is taught in the Bible, and no other inter- 
pretation was put upon scripture by primitive teachers ; and 
their illustrations taken from nature overthrew pagan philosophy, 
and no attempt has been made to answer them to this day. A 
single extract from Origen will show the strength of their argu- 
ments, and the kind of defenders for primitive Christianity — 
"As light accordingly could never exist without splendor, so 
neither can the son be understood to exist without the father, for 
he is called the "express image of his person" (Heb. i. 3), and 
the " word " and " wisdom." How, then, can it be asserted that 
there once was a time when he was not a " son?" Origen De 
Principiis, Book IV. Chap. 1 ; and again, Book I. Chap. 2 — 
"Wherefore we have always held that God is the father of his 
only begotten son, * * * derived from him without any be- 
ginning, not only such as may be measured by any division of 
time, but even that which the mind alone can contemplate within 
itself, or behold, so to speak, with the naked powers of the un- 
derstanding; and therefore we must believe that ivisdom was 
generated before any beginning that can be either comprehended 
or expressed." Again he says — " Let him who denies that God 
has an eternal son be careful of impiety, for how could he be an 
eternal father unless he had an eternal son !" 

With these full and concise statements of the scripture and 
the unanimous teachings of primitive Christians, can they be 
reconciled with nature? Unhesitatingly, we answer — yes. They 
are "clearly seen by the things that are made." Every creature 
in the animal and vegetable world begins existence " through " a 
"medium," and is sustained by means; but how does nature 



61 

provide the "means?" "Through" the earth. "Through" 
what is the earth made to produce? The sun, and the sun, 
" through " his light and heat produces every thing in the vege- 
table world. Upon these, all herbiverous animals live, and car- 
niverous animals feed on them. So the sun furnishes us heat, 
light and rain, and perpetuates all life. But how does the sun 
do all this? " Through " his light and heat. 

Do not the light and heat proceed from the sun ? As revela- 
tion says, the " son proceedeth from the father" (the brightness 
of his glory — Heb. 1. 2). Are not this "light" and heat as old 
as the sun ? If the sun is eternal, is not the " light " which " pro- 
ceedeth " from him eternal, also? So we can not find an eternal 
"father" without an eternal "son." 

Is not this the very language and thought of revelation ? 
Take that difficult (and by some thought absurd) first chapter of 
John — " In the beginning was the word and the word was God, 
the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made 
by him." Now, take him who said — "I am the light of the 
world," and make the quotation from nature — " In the beginning 
was the light, and the light was the sun, the same was in the be- 
ginning with the sun and all things were made by the light." 
Where is the conflict? But apply it to other apparent contradic- 
tions— " I and my father are one," and "my father is greater 
than I." Now, apply it to nature, the light personified could 
say — " I and the sun are one, and the sun is greater than I;" and 
we might go through the Bible with natural figures and never 
find ajar. Take one more illustration — 

Going to the Mount of Olives, as the husbandmen pruned 
their vines, he said to his disciples, "If a man abide not in 
me he is cast forth as a branch and is withered, and men cast 



62 



them into the fire and are burned.»-John xv-6. Carry he 
figure through nature : the branch, while in the vine, " through 
that natural " medium," was prolific and fruitful ; but when sep- 
arated from the vine (the medium "through" which it was sus- 
tained) the very same heat and light that made it fruitful now be- 
come the instruments of its destruction. It is not the name of 
Jesus, but the great principles, that saves men; millions are 
saved who never heard of Christ. Men were saved by the same 
principles before he came. As an eternal emanation from God 
the father, as the light emanates from the sun, Jesus is the lite 
of nature. Every man can be good, and thus " abide " in him- 
the power that preserves life. If he " abide not " he destroys him- 
self When a man puts powder into a hollow tube and a leaden 
bullet on top and a cap behind, puts it to his head, springs the 
hammer and blows out his brains, we call him a suicide. In the 
concatenation of causes, what killed him? Neither the ball, 
powder, cap, or revolver, alone. Either taken by itself would be 
harmless; but, all taken together, is what is called a " co-opera- 
tive cause," and he put that cause in motion and was the cause 
of his own destruction. So, when a sane man, with malice and 
intention, takes the life of his fellow man and is put to death by 
the law in the concatenation of causes, what killed him? lwo 
witnesses testifying to his guilt did not kill him; nor the jury 
(another part of the machinery of the law) did not kill him; nor 
the judge, who passed the sentence ; nor the sheriff that executed 
the sentence. The co-operative causes of the law acted together, 
and he put them in motion and destroyed himself as really as he 
former man, for he knew the machinery of the law as well as the 
other did that of the revolver. Hence, there never has been, nor 
never can be in God's moral universe, a death by any other means 
than suicide. Nothing is able to destroy the soul but the soul 



63 

itself. It is one of the clearest principles of revealed ethics — 
"where there is no law there is no transgression." — Rom. iv-15. 
Hence, said Jesus, "Fear not them that kill the body and after 
that have no power." No creature has any power to hurt my soul 
but myself — nothing but a wilful violation of law can harm it ; but, 
when I wilfully violate a known law, I bring myself under con- 
demnation, and of necessity this state will justly continue until 
it is removed by divine clemency based on my own repentance and 
reformation. If I continue in this state until it reaches confirma- 
tion, or, as Jesus said, by the great gulf separating the rich man 
and Lazarus becomes " fixed," then if I sin eternally I will be 
punished as long as I sin. Hence, said Jesus, speaking of the 
" blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," he is "in danger of eternal 
damnation." The old " Anglo-Saxon " and the " New version " 
hit the original, "he is in danger of eternal sin." In danger of 
reaching (like everything in nature) maturity, or fixedness — an 
eternal sinner, when his own nature and the good of the universe 
demand his eternal separation from virtue and purity. Even as 
high an authority as Col. Ingersoll (reply to Dr. Field, p. 491) 
says, " Force without mercy is tyrannous ; mercy without force is 
but a waste of tears. Take from virtue the right of self defense 
and vice becomes the master of the world." This sentence settles 
all the Colonel ever has, or ever can, write against God's retribu- 
tive justice ; for, according to his own maxim, "take from " God 
the right of self-defense and vice becomes the master of the 
world " and hell takes possession of heaven. But, let it never be 
lost sight of, that in all God's moral government, every punish- 
ment is self-inflicted. Infants, idiots, and ignorance are not re- 
sponsible — "Sin is not imputed where there is no law."— Rom. 
v-13. 



64 

Let us now consider the doctrine of the Incarnation, as a nat- 
ural necessity. 

The doctrine, like that of a " medium " or mediator, is the uni- 
versal teachings of nature. The heavens are the incarnation of 
their maker's thoughts. In a steam engine the thoughts of its 
inventor and constructor are incarnated. Every word written is 
a thought incarnated — rendered visible, materialized. Just as 
much of a mystery in incarnating and materializing a thought so 
that the eye can see it, or the fingers of a blind man can feel it, 
as there is in the incarnation of the Son of God, the divine Logos 
or "Word." The principle is precisely the same. This diviue 
"word," says Justin Martyr (writer of first Christian apology), 
" is implanted in every race of men and those who live reasona- 
bly are Christians ; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus 
and men like them." — Apology, chap. 46. 

All nature is so full of this principle, and we are so familiar 
with it, that we reckon it among what we call natural laws. 
Viewed from this stand-point, the Incarnation is the result of 
natural law and founded on natural necessity. The savage con- 
veys his thought by words alone, and in every word is a thought 
incarnated; and while through life, in daily conversation, they 
hear each others thoughts, nothing would be harder to make them 
believe than to tell them that we can put our thoughts where we 
can see them. 

A missionary once said to an uneducated savage, " Go out to 
where the man is at work (several miles away) and bring me the 
frow." The native replied, "I can not understand his language 
and he can not speak mine." On reflection, the missionary 
picked up a piece of shingle and wrote on it, " send me the frow," 
and handing it the native said , ' ' take that and give it to the man. ' ' 



65 

With scorn and indignation the native turned, saying, "You 
came here to destroy our gods and our religion — that piece of 
wood can't talk ; your religion is worse than ours." The mission- 
ary, seeing the great difficulty in the man's mind, said, "Take it 
to him and if he does not send the frow I will pay you for going." 
The native went, and with extreme care approached the man and 
handed him the piece of shingle. Glancing at and dropping it 
down, he went and got the frow and handed it to the native. In 
wonder and astonishment the native took up the piece of a 
shingle and showed it to his people, declaring to them that it 
could talk ; and to him it was superior to all other gods, until he 
learned this mode of expressing thought. 

It is not our eyes that see, nor our ears that hear: they are only 
instruments used by our minds. It is " mind that sees and mind 
that hears, all beside is blind and dumb." I write " through " 
my glasses; when I remove them I can not read a word with the 
eyes nature gave me, yet no one thinks my glasses can see. A 
blind man, with raised letters, by the sense of feeling, can read 
my thoughts or the thoughts of God put into revelation ; and, in 
the mental grasp of this sublime principle in the divine incarna- 
tion, John wrote, "That which was from the beginning, which 
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon and our hands have handled, the word of life." 
— I John i-1. 

The whole system of idolatry was founded on the idea of incar- 
nation and derived its origin either from nature or the "deliv- 
erer" promised to mankind. The universality shows a common 
source, and it is very certain that no people worshipped the ma- 
terial substance of their idols, any more than Christians worship 
the human nature of Christ. For many years I have believed that 



66 

Jesus referred to the whole system of idolatry as false " incarna- 
tions ? ' when he said (John v-8), "all that ever came before me were 
thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them." Some com- 
mentators think he referred to the scribes and Pharisees ; others 
to Theudas and Judas, the Gaulorite, mentioned Acts v-36, 37, 
and by Josephus. But Josephus' chronology does not agree 
with the "days of taxing," mentioned by Gamaliel. To harmon- 
ize the statement, Dr. Lighfoot thinks Josephus made a chrono- 
logical slip ; but, the fact is, none of these ever claimed to be the 
Messiah, and were only insurrectionists ; and it is evident that 
Jesus referred only to claims of Messiahship, or the incarnation, 
and could not refer to the scribes and Pharisees or revolutionists, 
for he calls himself the "door" and these religious teachers 
"porters." This idea he emphasizes and repeats, "I am the 
door." Now, the highest ever before claimed was that of a 
"porter," as he said, to "open the door," and can not be applied 
to any class of religious teachers but the " mediator " or " incar- 
nation " — the one " door " or " medium " " through " which all 
must " enter," or be counted as " thieves and robbers." The an- 
cient Manicheans thought Jesus spoke of the prophets, and so 
they rejected them ; but this needs no refutation, as his referen- 
ces to and quotations from them refute the error. By calling him- 
self the " door" and religious teachers " porters," it is evident it 
can only be applied to the claim of a " medium " through which 
"men enter," for nothing else can fill the idea of a "door." 
Hence he says of the idolatrous system, they were " thieves and 
robbers." They stole the idea of his incarnation and "robbed " 
him of his claim to Messiahship ; — as a matter of fact this is 
done by all systems of idolatry to this day. 

Whoever will carefully examine the writings of the fathers in 



67 

their writings against idolatry will, I think, see that the whole 
system was founded on the idea of an incarnation and the ma- 
terial part was only regarded as the residence of the indwelling 
deity; and that this deity was only an advocate or intercessor 
with the Supreme God. In the case of Jonah i-6 — " What mean- 
est thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy god, if so be that God 
think upon us that we perish not." Here, it is evident, that after 
every man had "cried unto his god" and the storm continued, 
they wanted Jonah to " call upon his god " as an intercessor, and 
the reason assigned, " if so be that God think upon us that we per- 
ish not." Mosheim Eccl. Hist., vol. 1, p. 25, says: " Senseless as 
the worshippers of imaginary gods truly were, they did not wish 
to be accounted worshippers of lifeless substances — brass, stone, 
and wood ; but of the deity which they maintained to be present 
in the image, provided it was consecrated in due form." He then 
cites seven ancient authors, and might have cited many more, as 
Cyprian and others. 

I was struck by an incident related by Rev. C. Smith, M. D , 
just returned from Bishop Taylor's mission in Africa, in a lecture 
recently delivered in this city. The doctor told of visiting the 
chief of the tribes. In trying to convert him to Christanity the 
chief told him what his " gilla gilla " could do, and how powerful 
to protect; and how it had a few days before "gone many miles 
away and saved the life of his father when attacked by robbers." 
The doctor said, "Now, that 'gilla gilla' is right where he was 
when I was here before, and the same dust is still on him ; he has 
not been away." The chief replied, "O no, the Qutside did not 
go ; it w T as the inside that went." Here, it is evident, the chief 
held the same idea of his "gilla gilla " that the doctor did of the 
human nature of Christ — both held the idea of an incarnation ; a 



68 

medium " through " and "in " which the deity acts and resides — 
a "door." 

This great idea of the promised incarnation has been the life 
and soul of all true worshippers from "Abel's sacrifice" until to- 
day. Its corruption in the patriarchal age resulted in the dark- 
ness and degradation of the gentile world ; and its corruption in 
the Christian world did the very same thing, producing the dark 
ages. When Peter was made the " Rock " and Mary the " Door " 
the true entrance to the "sheep fold " was lost and worshippers, 
like the divinely smitten men of Sodom, " wearied themselves 
to find the door." A single passage from the " Glories of Mary," 
by St. Alponsus Liquori, an authorized work of seven hundred 
and ninety pages, being a collation from the writings of canon- 
ized saints, will suffice — " She is called the gate of heaven by the 
Holy church because, St. Bernard again observes, as every re- 
script of grace set by the king comes through the palace gate, so 
it is given to Mary, that through her thou shouldst receive what- 
soever thou hast. St. Bouaventure, moreover, says that Mary is 
called the gate of heaven because no one can enter heaven if he 
does not pass through Mary, who is the door of it." Here we see 
Mary is called the " door," the very title Christ applies to himself 
alone, and said that he who " entered" by any other was a " thief 
and a robber ; " and this collation from the "Saints," composing 
an authorized work, continues the same strain through seven 
hundred and ninety pages. Take another: "Hence, says St. 
Bernadine, ' all gifts, all virtues, and all grace are dispensed by 
Mary to whom she will, when she will, and in the manner she 
will.' " — Page 179. Again, on p. 201, " St, Bernadine, of Sienna, 
does not hesitate to say that all obey the commands of Mary, even 
God himself, signifying ; by these words that God listens to her 



69 

prayers as though they were commands." If anything is clear in 
revelation and history it is this — that the corruption and loss of 
divine incarnation was the cause of all darkness and error, both 
before and after his advent, by holding up a false light, and ob- 
scuring the "true light which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world." 

Our last inquiry is, does the Bible account of Christ's Incarna- 
tion set aside or abrogate what are called the laws of nature? 
With a proper definition and understanding of what are called 
natural laws we unhesitatingly say, no; and that the "seed of 
the woman," in the scriptural account of the divine incarnation, 
traveled not one step outside the dominion of nature for its ful- 
fillment. 

To correctly understand any great "natural" problem we 
must divest our minds of all misleading terms, as they create false 
impressions; and one of these terms is "natural law," when, 
strictly speaking, there is no such thing. In all the realm of na- 
ture no other instrument is used but force. Gravitation is not a 
"law," it is a "force"; and, because it acts uniformly, the idea 
of a law is formed in our minds. The " law " is not in the force, 
it is in our conception of how the " force " acts. 

With these unquestioned facts, let us look at this wonderful 
question from a matter of fact stand-point. Where did the first 
life come from ? It is a conceded fact that the time was when 
there was not a man on this earth. From scripture, science, and 
nature we look to this earth in vain for the origin of life. 
" Through " the stream of transmission alone we trace it back to 
a period when there was no life in the world. How did it get 
here? Transmission thus far has been the only mode. Did that 
mode bring it into the world? Revelation says it did — "He 



70 

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." Life was never 
created. By whatever process organisms were formed, life goes 
by transmission, and from the male parent ; and all organized be- 
ings come from an egg. This is produced by the female. Give to 
this egg vitalization and an animal is the result. The vitalizer from 
the male does not produce life, it is life itself, seen by the micro- 
scope. The vitalizer of the male, brought into contact with this 
egg by any other than natural means, would be just as effectual 
in propagation. Now, if it was a natural necessity that such a 
man as Jesus should come into the world, what would be re- 
quired to produce him? The ovum, or egg, of a "virgin" (for 
reasons given in only sparing the Canaanitish virgins, as a mar- 
ried woman would have contaminated and destroyed the Jewish 
people). This answers the Jewish interpretation of Isaiah vii-14 
— "A virgin shall conceive," etc. The Hebrew word(Almah) 
they say means a " young woman " ; but nothing but a " virgin " 
would do, as nothing else could propagate uncontaminated hu- 
manity ; besides, as Origen says in his answer to Celsus, book 1, 
chap. 35— "What kind of a sign would it be for a young woman 
not a virgin giving birth to a child?" And the prophet said, 
"Behold, I will give you a sign, a virgin shall conceive," etc, and 
he used the proper word to express it. 

Keeping strictly within the dominion of nature, let us ask— 
What was the vitalizer to the first man ? It could not have been 
the male semen, as there was no male to impart it ; and yet it cer- 
tainly came from the " dominion of nature " some where. Then 
if life is taken from the original fountain from which the first 
man's life was derived, does this go out of the dominion of na- 
ture? Nothing is done but what had been done before, hence he 
is called the "Second Adam." — I. Cor. xv. 45. There was no 



71 

departure from nature, but an act that met the greatest natural ne- 
cessity that ever existed ; for, as human nature exists, no power 
in the universe (without violating the laws of his beiug) can give 
to man a perfect system of instruction without combiniug exam- 
ple with precept. No amount of teaching alone, without exam- 
ple or practice, can enable a man to make a watch or a steam en- 
gine. You must not only tell him what to do, but you must show 
him how to do it. 

But how can you show man his duty and how give him exam- 
ple? Only "through" man. The model must be a man. An 
angel as a model for man would no more do than a watch would 
do for a model to make steam engines by. NothiDg but a model 
man will do for men to follow. How can he be made ? But in 
one way. To make a man, every drop of his blood, every parti- 
cle of his bone, and every fiber of his muscle must come from a 
woman. Get him in any other way and he is not a man, has no 
connection with the human race. To be a man he must be the 
" seed of the woman," and " when the fullness of time was come 
God sent forth his son made of a woman. — Gal. iv. 4. To be a 
man, his body must come from a woman, but from whence must 
his life be derived ? If taken from the contaminated fountain of 
man, he will inherit man's depravity ; but go back to the uncon- 
taminated fountain from which the first man's life was derived 
and communicate that life with the egg of a virgin, and a perfect 
man is the result, and no violation of nature occurs, but the high- 
est demand of nature is met. 

Look at the corroborating evidence. When the conception 
of John the Baptist was announced, his father asked the angel 
— "Whereby shall I know this?" — he was struck dumb for 
asking ; but six months after this, when the birth of Jesus was 



72 

announced and Mary asked that same question, he condescended 
to explain it to her to throw natural light on the conception of 
Jesus—" The power of the highest shall come upon thee and the 
Holy Ghost shall overshadow thee." A plain allusion to Gen. 
i. 2, where the spirit of God moved upon the waters to impart vi- 
tality or life. Now, take all the predictions of his birth, the 
place, the time (before the sceptre departed from Judah), and that 
he should gather the Gentiles (which we see) of his crucifixion; 
not a- bone of him was to be broken ; his burial in the rich man's 
tomb; his resurrection— all authentically set forth many centu- 
ries before he was born. Then consider the fact that outside the 
circulation of his life and the preaching of his gospel, no moral 
progress has been made ; yet he was born, raised and educated 
among what, Ernest Renan says, were the most illiterate people 
civilization produced, and yet he says — "In all the oncoming 
ages there will never be born a greater than Jesus." 

If every effect must stand on an adequate cause, the divine 
mission of Jesus is seen in the results and established by the 
promised " glory that should follow." — I. Pet. i. 11. 

The leading opposers of Christianity sa3^ — Jesus was a good 
man. Col. Ingersoll pays him high honors. Ernest Renan 
says — " In all the oncoming ages there will never be born a greater 
than Jesus." This puts him at the head of the human race, and 
honors the Christian family. But is it consistent? No. Jesus 
was the son of God, or he was the worst man that ever set foot 
on this planet:— a good man say — "lam the living bread that 
came down from heaven ; if any man eat of this bread he shall 
live forever; " "I am the resurrection and the life; he that be- 
lieveth in me shall not die eternally;" " O, father, glorify me 



73 



with the glory I had with thee before the world was," and u be- 
fore Abraham was, I am"! What an estimate of a good man to 
call a man good that would utter such sentiments unless they 
were true. Jesus was good ; and to be good, he had to be truth- 
ful ; and ages of experience prove him to be the one great need of 
humanity, and those who put their trust in him shall never be 
confounded. 




Lecture Five, 



Miracles, 




]HAT is a miracle, and what does the idea involve, are 
| among the "things hard to be understood." The 
V* discussion of the subject has resulted in a better un- 
derstanding of nature and the character of its great author. 
Minds of extraordinary strength and culture have been divided, 
and the mental progress that has resulted from the discussion en- 
ables us to see the weak and untenable positions of both sides. 
Hume's objection, that a miracle being contrary to human expe- 
rience is not to be credited, for a long time baffled theologians, 
and their replies, now looked at from our present state of progress, 
are as defective as his statement of the case was foolish. To say 
that " a miracle is not to be believed because it is opposed to hu- 
man experience," is equivalent to saying that a thing is not to be 
believed because it is seen. If an action were not contrary to 
human experience it would not be a miracle ; then, to say it is not 
to be believed because its nature is what it must be to make it 
what is required, is absurd. In the Old Testament what is in- 
cluded in the idea of a miracle means no more than a "sign " or a 
token. The Hebrew word (oth) means nothing more. Exod. xii-13 
— "The blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where 



ye are;" and, Gen. ix-13, "My bow in the cloud for a token. 1 ' 1 
In the New Testament the Greek word (dunamis) means power, 
energy, strength. Acts viii-13 — "Beholding the miracles and 
signs which were done." This is as far as the Bible is committed 
as to the nature of a miracle — which is simply an extraordinary 
exertion of power. 

To determine the relation a miracle sustains to the " laws of 
nature," we must first determine what the laws of nature are. 

We have seen in a former lecture that when speaking of the 
laws of nature we get impressions that lead us astray. As law is 
only a " rule of action," the very thought is destroyed if in our 
mental conception we eliminate intelligence, which we do when 
we say "laws of uature," when speaking of either the demands 
or result of nature. " Law " can not execute itself— that is only a 
prescribed " rule" — it takes force to execute the "law." This is 
just as true of what we call "natural" as it is of human law; 
hence, we reach tlie conclusion that it is force and not law with 
which nature carries on all her operations. 

Nature tells us that one force (gravity) unifies the universe, and 
that all the forces of nature resolve themselves into this one great 
force. Tynclall says — "gravitation is the potential form of all en- 
ergy in the universe." The Bible tells us that all the duties of 
man are comprehended in the one commandment ; " love " or loy- 
alty " is the fulfilling of the law ;" that a departure from this com- 
mandment is the cause of all moral evil ; that there are nine 
" ways " that lead off from this road of life ; that signs of these 
nine places are hung up prohibiting men from leaving this road — 
" Thou shalt not" — while obedience to the one only command — 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," preserves moral harmony 
in the moral universe ; that this force {love) holds the same place 



77 

in the moral, that gravity does in the physical universe ; main- 
tains unity, and, as a matter of fact, we see that when this food 
(love or loyalty) becomes disturbed and destroyed in a civil gov- 
ernment, disruption, disintegration and destruction are the re- 
sults. In the physical universe this cau never take place, and be- 
low, the moral can never exist ; but in the moral, can not be pre- 
vented even by Omnipotence. There can be but one way to pre- 
vent moral evil, and that is the non-existence of moral beings ; 
for without freedom and choice in action, no moral being can ex- 
ist, even by the utmost exertion of omnipotence ; for omnipotence 
can never work a contradiction — no power, without transform- 
ing the nature of a horse, could ever make him a man. 

As this principle is fundamental in understanding the nature 
of, and consequences involved in, a miracle, we must look at it 
carefully. 

Omnipotence is from omnis (all), and potens (power). In me- 
chanics, philosophy, or nature, what will power do that is not 
under the guidance and direction of wisdom? Jesus expressed 
every force used by omnipotence when he said — " a kingdom di- 
vided against itself cannot stand." Every conceivable case is 
governed by this rule. Let two balls of the same weight, dens- 
ity, velocity, and distance be shot from two guns, and come in 
contact, and the result is neutralization of both forces. Let two 
trains of cars approach each other on a level road, both locomo- 
tives of the same weight, density, distance, same number of cars 
and tons and pounds of freight — the forces being equal, neither 
one could repel* the other as the combined forces are exactly alike ; 
but if one train had one pound more than the other, that pound 
would be represented in the collision. Apply this principle to 
omnipotence. If omnipotence would oppose omnipotence, de- 



struction would be the result, from the simple fact that omnipo- 
tence is just as powerful as omnipotence — and is opposed by an 
equal force. We see clearly that all force must be directed by 
wisdom, and omnipotence is no exception to this rule. The infi- 
nite power that moves the worlds through infinite space, is under 
the guidance of infinite wisdom. Suppose the wisdom could fail 
and the power continue, what would be the result? Worlds 
would crush upon worlds, and total bankruptcy spread through 
the sheeted fields of immensity. Hence, revelation and nature 
both tell us that omnipotence can not work a contradiction. " It 
is impossible for God to lie." — Heb. v-18; and "he can not deny 
himself." — II. Tim. ii-13. Moral government can not exist with- 
out freedom, and a moral being can be influenced only by mo- 
tives — not even by omnipotence itself. Hence, as we have seen 
(Lecture Three), every moral being holds its destiny in its own 
hands, and if it destroys itself, it is not worthy of an existence. 
Man can use these forces of nature, and, by different and endless 
combinations, produce every conceivable result — " We are labo- 
rers together with God." — I. Cor. iii-9 ; "workers together with 
him." II. Cor. vi-1, and we can not "work with God " unless we 
" work like God." 

What is called "nature" or " laws of nature," is hard to de- 
fine. Unlimited thought and great latitude can be found in 
the expression, so much so that writers using these terms fre- 
quently antagonize or destroy their own statements. Col. In- 
gersoll, in his reply to Dr. Field, p. 488, says — "Let it be under- 
stood once for all, nature can not pardon." Again, p. 487—" Right 
and wrong exist in the nature of things." And on p. 483 — " I say 
in the nature of things there can be no evidence of the existence 
of a supreme being ;" and on p. 502 — " If nature is infinite, ho v.* 



79 

can there be a power outside of nature." These extracts show us 
the Colonel believes that nature embraces all that exists, and that 
outside of it there is absolutely nothing ; but, when the Colonel 
wants to show that what are called the Christian graces existed be- 
fore Christ's advent, he says, on p. 501— " Justice, love, mercy, for- 
giveness, honor, and all the virtues that ever blossomed in the 
human heart, were known and practiced for uncounted ages be- 
fore the birth of Christ." 

Now, if "nature is supreme" and "can not pardon," as the 
Colonel says, then to talk of " forgiveness " or " mercy" or any 
conciliatory virtue, is as illogical and contradictory as to talk about 
water in an empty jug ; for if " nature " is all that exists and " na- 
ture can not pardon," neither " mercy " nor "forgivness" can 
have any existence, even in the prolific imagination of Col. In- 
gersoll himself (unless he is supernatural— and if he is, nature is 
not supreme), and to believe his doctrine we must attribute the 
assertion to a slip of his pen and not to an intentional statement. 

If law is a "rule of action" nature is only the instrument 
through which the supreme intelligence acts. Hence, if a com- 
pany should build a heavy manufacturing establishment in Port- 
land and propose to propel it by water taken from the Willam- 
ette river, and a careful survey would disclose the fact that the 
wheel was twenty feet higher than the point at which the water 
was taken from the river— carrying out that proposed plan, all 
the capital in Portland could not make that machinery move. 
Add to this capital the wealth of Oregon, the United States, the 
Rothchilds, and the world, and all the angels in heaven, and the 
machinery under this plan will never run, and can never be made 
to till we change the plan and work with and like God. This line 
of thought is the sum of all man's education since God placed him 



80 

upon the earth. " Multiply, replenish and subdue and have do- 
minion," was the the first command given— Gen. i-28 ; and it 
certainly includes a controlment of every force of nature. When 
we use these forces, as God uses them, we " work with him," and 
are successful; when we use them ivrong we " work " against him 
and fail. 

It is by combining and changing those forces that we get dif- 
ferent results. For instance: a steamboat, on a smooth surface 
of still water, with one hundred pounds of steam, would make 
twelve miles per hour ; when put against a current running six 
miles per hour, the combination would then read — twelve miles 
of steam, six miles of opposing current, and the steamer would 
make six miles per hour. Bring another force in the shape of an 
opposing wind, sufficient to propel the ship three miles per hour 
on a still surface of water, the combination then reads — twelve 
miles of steam, six miles of an opposing current, and three miles 
of opposing wind ; — the ship then makes three miles per hour. 
Change the combinations. Instead of an opposing, let it be a 
helping wind ;— the combination then reads— twelve miles of steam, 
six miles of an opposing current, three miles of a helping wind, 
and with mathematical precision, this gives us nine miles per hour. 
In physics and mechanics this mode of investigation will never 
lead us astray. As we by the letters of the alphabet can express 
every idea that comes into our minds, and every new idea in dis- 
covery and progress, so, by a different combination of the forces 
of nature, everything man now does is done, and no limit can be 
placed to future progress. If we understood the forces of nature 
as the creator understands them, all miraculous events recorded 
would appear as simple as the common occurrences of nature. 
Just like any other system of education — as a knowledge of the h t- 



81 

ters of the alphabet enables us at first to express a few feeble 
thoughts by a few monosyllables, and by progress continue until 
we can write and explain the wonders of nature as fast as we learn 
them, so in nature, as far as we can comprehend, everything is 
done by what we call "natural law " ; and of all the miracles re- 
corded in the Bible I do not believe one event occurred outside of 
what is called "natural law." Do we not see greater things in 
nature than the Hebrews ever saw performed by Moses or Christ ? 
They saw Jesus make wine out of water (a departure from the or- 
dinary mode). I see ice made in the heat of summer— as much of a 
departure; but in neither case no violation is done to what is 
called " nature." They saw a dead man raised to life ; I see living 
men standing before me, with a consciousness that the time was 
when there was not a man or any living thing on this earth. 
This is by far the greatest miracle. I see a creation ; they only see 
a restoration of life. I have seen multitudes who lived in sin, 
some of them leading drunken and profligate lives till seventy 
years old, when a transforming influence made all things new, 
and changed a demon into a saint, who thus lived and died. It is 
a greater stretch of power to bring a dead soul to life than it is a 
dead body. They saw the Red Sea divided and the hosts of Israel 
pass through on dry land. The conduct of Martin Luther at the 
Diet of Worms was a greater display of power. Inert matter 
could offer no resistance to the will of its creator ; but here was one 
of the most august assemblies of men the world had ever seen. Be- 
fore them stood a man, the very embodiment of all they hated. 
Strike him down, and Rome has no rival. While fire and the 
sword awaits every impenitent heretic, they say unto him, "re- 
cant, or die." To this he replied, " I never will, so help me God." 
Then every countenance turned pale, and every arm fell par- 



82 

alyzed, and like Jesus at the temple before his " hour had come," 
he "passed through the midst ot them and went his way." 

Because the old dispensation is closed and the Spirit dispensa- 
tion fully set in, rendering physical miracles no longer necessary, 
we are too prone to cling to material things, by which God is put 
off too far from the government of the world, and because they 
(as Jesus said by his kingdom) "come not with observation " and 
are only seen by spiritual perception, we overlook them till, like 
Jacob, we are aroused by some vision to exclaim " God is in this 
place and I knew it not." Then, and not till then, are we able to 
comprehend the words of Jesus — "He that believeth on me the 
works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these 
shall he do because I go to my Father." — John xiv-12. 

Where there is a well defined belief in a personal creator whose 
government over the universe is absolute, there never can be any 
difficulty in the belief of miracles ; for such a belief must hold 
either what are called the laws of nature to be only another name 
for the will of God, or the instruments through which his will is 
accomplished. With either one miracles are both reasonable and 
necessary, and can not be excluded from his moral government 
or nature. To say that any mode of existence or any order in na- 
ture is fixed as to render it necessary with God that it must be so, 
is to destroy the very idea of God's existence ; for unless God is 
free to establish every mode, and suspend life and its perpetuity 
upon whatever conditions he pleases, he is not free, and if not 
free, is necessitated, and the necessitating cause being superior to 
him, destroys his very existence as a supreme being. God must be 
free. His only government is his own nature. Was he, then, 
compelled to suspend animal life on its present conditions? To say 
he was, would make something else superior to him. To be God 



83 

he must be supreme ; yet his established order of things is so ar- 
ranged that all his intelligent creatures can learn his character, 
know his will, and by his established orders, know when they 
act and plan what the result will be. Without such established 
order no system of education could be instituted among his intel- 
ligent creatures. To say that the creator is compelled to adhere 
to this order and can never depart from it either in manner or 
mode, is to deny his very existence and contradict the facts of na- 
ture. Dr. Draper, the celebrated physiologist, in his physiology, 
p. 9, says — "For the maintenance of life in man three chemical 
conditions must be complied with : he must be furnished with 
air, water and combustible matter. Under the same conditions, 
also, all animals exist. To breath, to drink, to eat — are the indis- 
pensable requisites of life." That the doctor here states what is 
the fundamental, and one of the most unvarying of what are 
called " laws of nature," no one doubts. But, to say that life can 
not be suspended on any other conditions, or that an animal can 
not live without " air, water and food," is plainly contradicted by 
nature, recognized by science. Stones are broken open containing 
living toads, which for many thousand years remained in this 
condition, during which time they did not "eat," "drink," nor 
" breathe." To be sure this is called " suspended animation," yet 
it demonstrates that the creator is not compelled to suspend life 
on these three conditions, nor either one of them. Nothing Moses 
or Christ ever performed was a greater departure from the estab- 
lished order of things in nature than this, yet who, looking at 
what has already been done by nature, can think for a moment 
that such phenomenon contravene nature ? How can we restrict 
the actions of the author of nature? There is nothing by which 
we can measure the acts of a supreme being. To say any act of 



84 

the author of nature is unnatural, is as absurd as to say that the 
constitution of the United States is unconstitutional. 

Nature furnishes many examples of perpetuating life where 
one or all of these means are not used. The truth is, nature is 
only invariable in the regulations which govern her physical de- 
partment, where stability and permanence must be maintained ; 
but in the world of animation and intelligence, where the laws 
of adaptation are required to meet the wants of varied conditions 
of animal and rational life, nature furnishes many examples of 
departure from her demands in the department below. 

In what is termed " physical laws," or, more properly, the 
laws that govern our physical nature, no provision is made for 
"ignorance" or "accident." If I accidently discharge a gun 
and the ball goes through my neighbor's heart, or let my child 
fall in the fire, it is as bad for my neighbor or my child as if it was 
done intentionally, but has no moral effect. If the law shows favor 
in one department, why not in the other? It is a curious fact, 
that of the sacrifices put on Jewish altars for fifteen hundred 
years, it was said—" to make an atonement for your souls." For 
our animal or physical nature, no "atonement" or satisfaction 
has been made, and the penalty is invariably executed. But in 
the moral, no penalty is attached to ignorance or accident, as the 
law was founded on the great satisfaction made " from the found- 
ation of the world." 

With the foregoing reflections, I think we are now prepared 
to look at the nature of what is called a miracle and consider 
what is involved in those recorded in the Bible. The definition 
has varied with progressive thought. The latest is — "a suspen- 
sion, or controlment of, or deviation from, the known laws of 
nature." Here are three definitions— " suspension," " control- 



85 

ment" and " deviation." The last only describes the action, but 
gives no idea what is involved in it. The two others are well de- 
fined and involve actions, the consequences of which are diamet- 
rically opposed to each other. The first — "suspension" — means 
to stop or destroy the ''law ;" the other—" controlment " — means 
to leave the " law " undisturbed, and overcome it by an adequate 
compensation or satisfaction. " Suspension," in the forces of na- 
ture, is a thing unknown ; " controlment " is nature's universal 
mode of action." When the decree went forth to make " fowls 
to fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven," and 
"fowls" obeyed, the decree of the law of gravitation was not 
"suspended," but it was "controlled" by the mechanical ar- 
rangement of the bird's wing and the application of muscular 
force; and when these combined agencies had rendered an ade- 
quate satisfaction, then gravitation helped the bird to "fly." 
Has there ever been an act performed in the universe, from the 
flying of an insect to the revolution of a planet, in any other 
way? 

" Gravitation," says Tyndall, "is the potential form of all the 
energy in the universe;" and in the realm of nature and all the 
works of men, nothing is done and no act is performed, without 
rendering satisfaction to this all-pervading force ; and in strict 
accordance with this universal mode of nature, Jesus expressed 
the entire object of his mission, and took in his whole life-work, 
when he said to his disciples — "I have overcome the world." 
This one word describes his mission, shows every result accom- 
plished by the operation of natural laws, and writes the history of 
every successful life — " overcome "—and a miracle is no exception 
to this rule. 

It may be thought that it is of little importance which theory 



is adopted — "suspension" or " controlroent " of nature — in a 
miracle ; but a little reflection will dispel this thought, for " sus- 
pension " is not found in either the Bible or nature, but control- 
ment runs through both ; and a careful and thorough study of 
the subject will show us that the very life ot the Christian sys- 
tem depends on the distinction ; for if law could have been sus- 
pended, the death of Christ was not a necessity, and the gift of 
God's " only begotten son," is equivalent to a positive declaration 
from God himself that law could not be suspended. " It behooved 
Christ to suffer." — Luke xxiv-45. "He magnified the law and 
made it honorable." — Isa. xlii-21. 

Take the two leading miracles recorded in the Bible — the three 
Hebrew children in the " fiery furnace," and the prolongation of 
light recorded in the book of Joshua. The simple question is — 
To accomplish these results, what would be required to "sus- 
pend " or "control " natural law ? To " suspend " would require 
an exertion of Almighty power in two ways. First — To suspend 
the law ; and, second — To maintain the equilibrium of the uni- 
verse during the suspension. To accomplish the same results by 
controlling , would only require the exercise of wisdom to combine 
and direct the forces or laws of nature so as to render competent 
and adequate satisfaction ; the way by which every act in nature 
is performed, which is simply an exertion of power sufficient to 
accomplish the result — these forces being ouly another name for 
the Divine will, or the laws previously established and now used 
for the accomplishment of the action. 

To perform the miracle of prolonging light recorded in Josh. 
x-12 — if done by suspending nature's laws, what would be re- 
quired? Here I will quote Prof. O. M. Mitchell, one of the first 
astronomers of the age, and, at the time of his death, director of 



87 

the observatories at Cincinnati and Albany. Speaking of the 
consequences involved in this very miracle on the hypothesis of 
" suspension," he says (Astronomical Lectures, p. 262) : " What 
special interference with the laws of motion and gravitation 
would be required to accomplish the results here demanded? To 
arrest the apparent motion of the sun and moon, it is only nec- 
essary to suspend the rotation of the earth on its axis. Its revo- 
lution in its orbit might continue uninterrupted ; the moon's rev- 
olution around the earth in like manner might remain unaffected ; 
and, indeed, the whole planetary system could not in the smallest 
degree be affected by the change in the period of rotation of the 
earth on its axis. But any sudden check in the velocity of rota- 
tion of the earth on its axis would have a tendency to throw off* 
from its surface, especially near the equator. No sudden check, 
however, is required; and, indeed, a gradual diminution of the 
velocity of rotation might be made, such that in forty seconds the 
motion might cease entirely, and the change not be sensible to 
the inhabitants of the earth except from the appearance of the 
heavens. I may then ask — did the miracle only require the 
gradual destruction of the rotation of the earth on its axis and 
the restoration of the same ? E answer — much more was de- 
manded. The figure of the earth is such, the ocean, so far as it 
covers the equatorial regions, is sustained to a much higher level 
by the centrifugal force, due to the velocity of rotation, than 
would be compatible with its equilibrium in case this element of 
stability were destroyed ; so that the direct power and interposi- 
tion of God would be required to not only suspend the earth's ro- 
tation, but also to prevent the equatorial oceans from rushing to 
the poles, and, in their passage, submerging the whole earth." 

Here we see that the theory of "suspension" demands three 
separate exertions of Almighty power — 



88 

First. To stop the earth's revolution on its axis. 

Second. To hold the equatorial oceans from rushing to the 
poles. 

Third. To again start and establish the earth's revolution as 
before. 

How clearly do we see the theory of compensating forces in 
Dr. Mitchell's requirement to "suspension." Stop the earth's 
revolution and "the direct interposition of God would be re- 
quired to prevent the equatorial oceans from rushing to the poles." 
Why? He tells us the " centrifugal force due to the velocity of 
rotation sustained the equatorial waters on a much higher level." 
Hence, when this compensating (centrifugal) force to gravity was 
"suspended," gravitation then caused the waters to " rush to the 
poles." Nothing can be made clearer than is here stated — that in 
the government of the universe permanence and stability can 
only be maintained by compensating forces adequate to satisfy 
gravitation, and that this all-commanding and all-pervading 
force holds in its grasp every atom throughout immensity, and 
suffers nothing to be disturbed, from an atom to a world, without 
an adequate compensation or satisfaction. The very life of the 
whole remedial scheme of human redemption, which alone can 
satisfy the demands of violated law, shows "clearly" (as seen 
in lecture four) that the universe was " created " and is governed 
" instrumentally " or "through" a "mediator," mean or "me- 
dium." 

Let us now look at "controlment" and see what consequences 
would be involved in this great miracle. Could light be pro- 
longed without "suspending" the earth's motion, resuming it 
again, and during the suspension do what "centrifugal " force had 
before done and has since been doing, hold the equatorial waters 



89 

by an immediate exertion of Almighty power, or do the forces or 
laws of nature contain such principles that by combining and 
arranging them the act could be performed without " suspend- 
ing " any law? Just as we have before said, as by a different com- 
bination of the letters of the alphabet, we can express any thought, 
so by combining and arranging these iorces, the ruler of the 
world can perform any act, and thus "overcome" (as Jesus said) 
instead of "suspend." The simple question is, are there such 
laws in nature that would permit this miracle to be wrought by 
natural law and not in opposition to it? Emphatically we say, 
yes. 

We have in nature a law of refraction by which the rays of 
light are deflected. This we ourselves can vary and intensify. 
It is also varied in nature. Who on driving into a clear stream 
of water on a bright sunshiny day has not seen the tire and felloe 
of his buggy bent till its surface seemed deeply depressed. By in- 
terposing a refracting "medium" of variable density all recorded 
in this great miracle could be performed and not disturb the mo- 
tion of a planet or infract a single law. But let us hear Prof. 
Mitchell again on this point. On p. 265 the Professor says — 
" There is another way in which this miraculous event could have 
been produced without in any degree interrupting the earth's ro- 
tation or suspending the laws of equilibrium, which govern the 
heaving waters of the great deep. It is well known that the at- 
mosphere, in common with many transparent substances, pos- 
sesses the power of refracting light so as to bend the rays from 
their rectilineal path, causing them to reach the eye even after 
the object whence they are emitted or reflected is already below 
the horizon. Thus we know that the sun, moon and stars, from 
this cause always remain visible for a short time after their sitting 



90 

below the horizon ; and in fixing the place of a celestial body, as- 
tronomers are compelled to determine the laws of atmospheric re- 
fraction, and to apply to the apparent place a correction due to 
refraction to obtain the true place. Hence, then, we find among 
the laws of nature, the mean whereby the sun and moon by mi- 
raculous power might be made to remain permanently for hours 
in the same apparent place. By interposing a refracting medium 
of such variable density that the refractive power would precisely 
counteract the effect of the earth's rotation. * * No natu- 
ral law operating within their usual limits could produce any such 
effect, and while in this case we would be compelled to admit the 
miraculous character of the phenomenon is wrought by the aid of 
natural laws, and not in opposition to them." — pp. 266-67. 

Prof. Mitchell, LL. D., graduated at West Point in 1829. 
Among his classmates were Generals Robert T. Lee, Joseph E. 
Johnson, and many of our own distinguished generals. At dif- 
ferent times he visited Paris, London, and Munich in his astro- 
nomical pursuits, and was honored by more than one institution 
with LL. D., was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society 
and several other foreign societies. 

If the Bible contradicted astronomy, no men ever lived who 
could see it quicker than Sir Isaac Newton and O. M. Mitchell ; 
yet they devoutly believed it, and have left us comments on it, 
and tell us that the astronomical statement and allusions, as far 
back as the book of Job, could not have been uttered without a 
better knowledge of the universe than we possess to-day. 

In the case of the three Hebrew children in the " fiery fur- 
nace," the question again recurs — was the heat "suspended" or 
was it " overcome?" The foregoing principles, if correct, would 
determine and say " overcome," and the record clearly shows it to 



91 

be so, for "the flame of the fire slew those men that took" them 
to the furnace: if the heat had been "suspended" it would 
have been harmless to all alike. 

The reason of such vague ideas of what is involved in a mira- 
cle is because of confusion of thought in reference to God's exist- 
ence and mode of government. Let these thoughts be clear and 
well defined so that in his government by natural agencies he can 
cause all the variable seasons, great departures from the usual 
course, such as drought, extreme heat and cold, violent winds, 
all of which have their natural causes by a combination of nat- 
ural forces used in government as a mechanic uses his tools ; for 
the very same argument that would exclude miracles from God's 
moral government would exclude God from the government of 
the physical world. Neither is there any truth or reason in 
Hume's objection, that a miracle can not be attested because it is 
contrary to human experience; for according to our astronomers 
February of 1866 had no full moon, January and March each had 
two, a thing not seen before or since man has been on the earth , 
and will not again happen it is said for one million five hundred 
thousand years, yet men can testify to that fact as well as any 
other occurrence. 

If a miracle is a departure from a uniform and well established 
course of events, recording but one departure in the history of the 
world or within the knowledge of man, then the existence and 
preservation of the Jewish people is the greatest miracle ever wit- 
nessed or recorded on the face of the earth. 

Make a circuit of the globe and in every civilized nation you 
can enter a Jewish synagogue and see a worship and a people that 
have descended from the cradle of the human race, with an ordi- 
nance and ancestry reaching back eight hundred years before 



92 

Homer sang the siege of Troy ; with statutes and laws that have 
moulded the civilized world, given them a thousand years before 
Alexander marched on his conquest against the world. Their an- 
cestral tree was full of bloom in the days of Hannibal, Cyrus and 
Caesar. Their prophets sang the funeral dirge of Tyre, Babylon, 
and Nineveh. They have seen the world's growth from the pa- 
triarchs to our presidents ; its progress from the war chariot to 
the iron clad, from the parchment to the steam printing press, 
and now, like the founder of their institution on the mountain 
top, their "eye is not dim nor their natural force abated." For 
two thousand years they have been separated till climate has 
changed their skin. Their tongues speak the language of all 
nations, yet their blood flows in but one channel and their faith 
has never changed. Persecuted and robbed since the days of 
their dispersion, yet they hold the purse strings of the world ; 
like the bush in which God appeared to Moses, ever burning but 
never yet consumed. A quarter of a million of them live in the 
United States, and yet they cost less for crime than Multnomah 
county costs Oregon ; and from the days of their idolatry, polyga- 
my, and slavery, they have had but one guide, one rule of life ; and 
yet by impious lips this Teacher has been called immoral. With 
such results as well might it be said that our ox-teams made better 
time than locomotives. To read these prophetic delineations of 
their own prophets, with their promised preservation and restora- 
tion, is the marvel of the world. 

I will close by giving the beautiful lines of one whose observa- 
tions and capabilities have been seldom equalled : 

" I saw them in their synagogue, as in their ancient day, 
And never from my memory, the scene will fade away ; 
For dazzling on my vision still, the latticed galleries shine 
"With Israel's loveliest daughters, in their beauty half divine. 



93 



" The two leaved doors slide slow apart, before the eastern screen, 
As rise the Hebrew harmonies, with chanted prayers between, 
And mid the tissued vail disclosed, of many a gorgeous dye, 
Enveloped in their jeweled scarfs, the sacred records lie. 

" Robed in his sacerdotal vest, a silver-headed man, 
"With voice of solemn cadence, o'er the backward letters ran ; 
And often yet methinks I see the glow and power that sate 
Upon his face as forth he spread the roll immaculate. 

" And fervently|that hour I prayed, that from the mighty scroll, 
Its light in burning characters, might break on every soul ; 
That on these children's hearts, the vail might be no longer dark, 
But be forever rent in twain, like that before the ark. 

" For yet the ten-fold film shall fall, O Judah from thy sight, 
And every eye be purged to read thy testimonies right; 
When thou with all Messiah's signs in Christ distinctly seen, 
Shalt by JEHOVAH'S nameless name, invoke the Nazarene." 



These lectures were prepared when the author was agent for the American 
Bible Society for Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Idaho, where so many 
scholars from all parts of the world coming to this coast and living in the 
mines, without moral culture, lost all taste for anything but natural evi- 
dences. 

For the "D. D." on the title page the author is not responsible, but it was 
added by the printer from general use. The title was never conferred or 
desired. 



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